Bubba Dubya?
RUBIN, MICHAEL
Bubba Dubya? A curiously Clintonian turn in U.S. foreign policy. BY MICHAEL RUBIN ON SEPTEMBER 20, 2001, President George W. Bush put the world on notice. "We will pursue nations that provide aid...
...It's deja vu all over again in the White House...
...While the Taliban denied hosting terror training camps, residents near Rishkhor, a camp just a few kilometers from Kabul, spoke of continued activity...
...Reviving the North Korea Model On May 31, 2006, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reversed U.S...
...Unanimously, senators and congressmen gave Bush a standing ovation...
...South Korea and our allies will be better protected...
...Kim Jong Il played Clinton...
...According to Somali officials, the camps are not indigenous, but are run by Palestinians and Syrians...
...We will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism...
...He followed the advice of professional diplomats and, for eight years, did what was short-term popular, but long-term unwise...
...Somalis living in Mogadishu speak of terrorist training camps established in the Lower Juba region, along the Kenyan border...
...Both Clinton and the Taliban reverted to business as usual...
...this decade, it is Somalia...
...Rice now even hints at scaling back U.S...
...What Bush offered Tehran mirrors what Clinton gave Pyongyang...
...opposition to the International Criminal Court...
...He trusted U.S...
...After a disastrous October 3, 1993, raid in Mogadishu, he ordered U.S...
...He let public opinion polls determine national security...
...There is no consensus about what these sanctions would constitute, nor is there a timeline...
...A declassified December 8, 1997, State Department cable detailed high-level talks between Assistant Secretary Karl F. Inderfurth and a Taliban delegation...
...What Bush offered Tehran mirrors what Clinton gave Pyongyang...
...To Albright and Berger, 1990s-style diplomacy, with its Precedent gives little ground for optimism...
...Here, chartered jets bring men and materiel for al Qaeda affiliate al-Itti-had al-Islami and the Taliban-like Islamic Courts Union, which is slowly consolidating its control over Mogadishu...
...This may please diplomats, but it does not ensure national security...
...An April 26 statement signed by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and five European former foreign ministers had advised, "We believe that the Bush Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is editor of the Middle East Quarterly...
...In March 2000, I spent three weeks in the Taliban's Afghanistan...
...While Prime Minister Tony Blair stood by Clinton, most European allies were lukewarm...
...On October 21, 1994, Ambassador Robert L. Gallucci signed the U.S.-North Korea Agreed Framework...
...Clinton Redux In 1993, Bill Clinton came to the White House without foreign policy experience...
...Clinton valued international affirmation...
...embassies in Kenya and Tanzania...
...We are agreed with our European partners on the essential elements of a package containing both the benefits if Iran makes the right choice, and costs if it does not...
...The Taliban promised to "keep their commitment and not allow Bin Laden and others to use Afghanistan as a base for terrorism...
...Security Council...
...International reaction was tepid at best...
...Sandy Berger, Clinton's second-term national security adviser, applauded the move: "[Rice] has done a very effective job in the last year and a half of consolidating foreign policy back in the State Department...
...the Stalinist state claims to have more...
...The 9/11 Commission detailed the Clinton administration's decision to trust diplomacy...
...We believe our message . . . came through loud and clear...
...emphasis on multilateralism and consensus over substance, is an end in itself...
...It is a model only for the triumph of appearance over substance...
...He still speaks about democracy and the war against terror, but increasingly his administration charts the path of least resistance and paper compromise so dominant during the Clinton years...
...Eighteen months later, graduates from Afghan camps like these brought down the World Trade Center...
...Today, the Bush administration is in full retreat from that high ground...
...Bush's recent about-face also seems driven more by public relations than strategy...
...Senior U.S...
...security to the goodwill of international organizations...
...Precedent gives little ground for optimism...
...Meanwhile, authorities in Turkey complain that Central Intelligence Agency officers meet with representatives from Kurdish terrorist groups, former CIA officers meet with Hezbollah, and the State Department plays a shell game with Hamas, withholding money on one hand, but dispensing the same funds through the United Nations Refugee Works Administration with the other...
...The Central Intelligence Agency now estimates North Korea has a couple of bombs...
...Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make...
...troops to evacuate the country, mission incomplete, a key factor, Osama bin Laden later said, in bolstering al Qaeda's confidence...
...In 1998, Pyongyang signaled its renewed belligerence when it launched a nuclear-capable Taepodong-1 missile over Japan...
...military from filling the vacuum in still stable regions of the country, such as Somaliland and Puntland...
...Sensing weakness, al Qaeda accelerated its training program...
...The Iranian president can threaten war, but if nuclear reactors are what it takes to get the United Nations to promise to consider whether to discuss talking about the possibility of taking action, then Bush is willing to agree...
...The entire world will be safer as we slow the spread of nuclear weapons...
...While Clinton did little to stop the capital flow from Gulf Arab sheikhs into the Taliban's Afghanistan, today the Bush team ignores the almost daily flights from Dubai to the Somali airfield at Baledogle, about 70 miles northwest of Mogadishu...
...Clinton explained, "North Korea will freeze and dismantle its nuclear program...
...military action against terror training camps but now also forbids the U.S...
...Not only has the Bush administration long nixed U.S...
...Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is playing Bush...
...The idea that Clinton's deal was a success is revisionist nonsense...
...Reporting was similarly blase when the Taliban seized Kabul just under a decade ago...
...Like Clinton before him, Bush is being tempted by the siren song of international peer affirmation...
...response to 9/11 was "an American strategy that is bold and decisive and takes the fight to [the terrorists]" and not Clinton's laid-back, law-enforcement approach that "led to September 11...
...rather, they are a product of Bush administration neglect...
...The intellectual elite applauded, even as Saddam Hussein, for example, exploited the United Nations for financial gain, the European Union funded Palestinian terrorists, and Iran developed secret nuclear facilities under the nose of the International Atomic Energy Agency...
...It didn't...
...And if it retreats to the policies that led to 9/11, it will fail...
...administration should pursue a policy it has shunned for many years: attempt to negotiate directly with Iranian leaders about their nuclear program...
...diplomats and European officials speaking on background outlined the proposed carrots and sticks: If Tehran promises to suspend uranium enrichment, sits down, and talks, it will receive light water nuclear reactors...
...actions...
...But North Korea did not freeze its nuclear program, and the world did not become safer...
...In the wake of Rice's announcement, senior U.S...
...Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists...
...On August 7, 1998, al Qaeda attacked the U.S...
...In the 1990s, Afghanistan was a forgotten backwater...
...Terrorists love a vacuum...
...As the Bush administration wishes the problem away, rich Saudi and Persian Gulf financiers work to consolidate the region as a jihadist base...
...During his September 20, 2001, speech before the joint session of Congress, Bush declared, "We will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail...
...On June 5, the Islamic Courts Union, an Islamist group affiliated with al Qaeda, seized Mogadishu, Somalia's capital...
...Secretary General Kofi Annan expressed "concern" and the Kremlin denounced U.S...
...military officials acknowledge the growing al Qaeda presence, but say they are forbidden to intervene...
...Just two days after Rice's concession, her Russian counterpart hinted at just how flaccid the proposed sticks were...
...Four days later, Vice President Dick Cheney reiterated the message and then, on March 23, 2004, so did Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld...
...On March 18, 2004, Rice told CNN interviewer John King that a proper U.S...
...Perhaps, some mused, this radical Islamist gang could restore order...
...Terror Training Camps It is not just the actions of the Bush administration that recall the Clinton years, but also the inaction...
...Her announcement delighted European diplomats and validated former Clinton administration officials...
...Today, the location is different, but the White House's desire to turn a blind eye is the same...
...The Clinton administration knew that Afghanistan played host to terror training camps...
...Bush administration figures once said they would not replicate Clinton's mistakes...
...Increasingly, though, the administration seems to be tiring and faltering...
...Speaking in Vienna, Sergei Lavrov commented, "I can say unambiguously that all the agreements from yesterday's meetings rule out in any circumstances the use of military force...
...Both journalists and policymakers were underwhelmed...
...The symbolic Tomahawk strike complete, he sought to assuage allies with renewed commitment to international multilateral diplomacy...
...It continued to enrich uranium and later withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty...
...If Tehran refuses to talk, Europe, Russia, and perhaps even China will discuss sanctions at the U.N...
...policy toward Iran...
...Thirteen days later, Clinton ordered a retaliatory missile attack on a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan and on Zhawar Kili, a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan...
...The State Department lauded its own success...
...In Kabul, shopkeepers described meeting Arabs and Filipinos training for jihad...
...In exchange for a freeze of the Stalinist dictatorship's nuclear program, Washington offered to supply Pyongyang with two light water nuclear reactors and a basket of additional incentives...
...Now, faced with falling poll numbers, and wanting the affirmation of the foreign policy elite here and abroad—from the Quai d'Orsay to Auswartiges Amt and Turtle Bay— the president seems to have reversed course...
...The Islamic Courts Union and the terrorist threat they pose did not materialize out of thin air...
Vol. 11 • June 2006 • No. 38
