June 04, 2003

Bush's Embarrassment Threshold

Angelo Codevilla's critiques of the Bush administration's conduct of the war on terror have been the clearest and (to me) most interesting and persuasive of all the post-911 commentary. Here's his latest, "When the Cheering Stops":

In a nutshell: President Bush ended up making war on Iraq more or less correctly only after having courted political and diplomatic disaster. Immediately after winning the battle, he resumed the policies that had forestalled military success. He reassured the terror regime of Syria, rewarded the terror regime of Palestine, did not scrub the remnants of Ba'ath rule in Iraq, and sought to relieve pressure on the Saudi royal family. Most important, any "regime change" abroad remained less certain than the permanence of the post-September 11 changes wrought by security measures in the American regime. Victory or defeat may well depend on George W. Bush's threshold of embarrassment.

Which appears to be extremely high.

Codevilla includes a concise summary of the course of the war, and an account of the "diplomatic malpractice" that followed, including this section about the Saudis:

It is no exaggeration to say that the problem of international terrorism is an extension of the internal problems of Saudi Arabia's royal family. These are threefold: dependence on the dangerous, radical Wahabi sect, divisions within the family based on different harem lines, and generalized corrupt, moneyed, impotence. For nearly a half-century, U.S. policy has moved heaven and earth, and overlooked much, to keep the Saudi regime from collapsing. But since September 11, many AmericansÑthough next to none in the State DepartmentÑhave asked the hard question of whether America would be better off were the Saudi regime allowed to succumb to its congenital ills. Its value had sunk so low that it would be worthwhile to use the leverage of military success in Iraq in order to make upon the Saudi regime demands essential to America's war on terror, regardless of how they might destabilize that regime. But State (and oil interests) easily persuaded Bush to continue betting on Saudi stability.

"Read the whole thing" is a phrase I (and others) throw around all the time, but this time I really mean it.

(via Bill Quick.)

Posted by Dr. Frank at June 4, 2003 08:46 AM | TrackBack