Author: Gordon

The text of Bush’s speech in Whitehall on Wednesday is here.

Ironic that Bush’s detractors claimed he knew nothing about foreign policy when he was running for office. Well, now he’s overturned 50 years of US foreign policy, and to my mind it’s much to the good.

Tim Bray has posted the text of the draft agreement from Geneva on Israel and Palestine. Seems like a reasonable effort, and I hope that Sharon and Arafat will at least allow referendums on it.

Of course we’ll need to see what’s in “Annex X”.

Update: as Damian Penny notes, this is basically a repeat of Oslo, of which agreement the Pals failed to implement a single point.

Mark Steyn with his usual trenchant wit.

The fanatical Muslims despise America because it’s all lapdancing and gay porn; the secular Europeans despise America because it’s all born-again Christians hung up on abortion; the anti-Semites despise America because it’s controlled by Jews. Too Jewish, too Christian, too Godless, America is also too isolationist, except when it’s too imperialist.

(Hat Tip: Instantman, of course.)

Victor Davis Hanson on the new realities of war. Key graf:

Consider Operation Desert Fox of December 1999. While mired in an
impeachment scandal, President Clinton ordered four days of bombing
against supposed WMD facilities in Iraq. Few claimed that he had
bombed to divert domestic attention from his own political troubles,
much less that the absence of any proof of destroyed weapons
facilities suggested there was none there to begin with. President
Clinton was not pilloried for either preemption or unilateralism —
although he did not go to the Senate for approval; did not seek U.N.
discussions; and he did not make the case that Saddam had first
attacked us — and of course he sought no multilateral resolution. Nor
was NATO or Europe involved. General Zinni oversaw operations and in a
press conference confessed that perhaps as many as 4,000 Iraqis could
have been killed, including some civilians. There were no peace
marches, no condemnatory European editorials, and very few Republican
allegations that in a year before a national election the United
States had unnecessarily and cynically aimed bombs at facilities that
were neither proven to have made weapons nor later destroyed. No
retired general accused General Zinni of unnecessary war making or
inflicting collateral damage — or called Clinton a “chicken-hawk.”