Jewish World Review Jan. 15, 2002/ 12 Shevat, 5763
Wesley Pruden
On second thought, he's not so bad
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Almost overnight, George W. Bush's aura as the invincible
man is beginning to wilt, shrouded in a fog of rationalization,
retrenchment and retreat.
The smart money may be on
Saddam Hussein surviving, after
all.
Showing no wounds from the
rhetoric relentlessly lobbed at him
over the past year from 1600
Pennsylvania Ave. and 10
Downing St., Saddam appears on
the brink of success in working a
monumental bluff on the West. The
tantrums in North Korea are about
to be rewarded. Al Qaeda is
regrouping in the wild border
regions of Pakistan. The
no-nonsense campaigner against
racial quotas, the man who refused to pander to race
scammers, on "quiet consideration" can't even make up his
mind about whether to file the brief, already prepared, to
support a landmark case against racial discrimination at the
University of Michigan.
The United Nations arms inspectors effectively gave up
yesterday, insisting they would need at least a year to
complete their investigation in Iraq. If he needs more time to
hide whatever he's got, Saddam was told yesterday he could
probably get it. "We need to take a few months," Mohamed
ElBaradei, the chief of the International Atomic Energy
Agency, said in Paris. "How long it takes depends on the
cooperation of Iraq." (This is called in other places "a blank
check.")
Ari Fleischer, the president's press spokesman, couldn't
have said it better, though he tried. "The president thinks it
remains important for the inspectors to do their job and have
time to do their job," he said. "The president has not put an
exact timetable on it."
This is not exactly how the president, or his various
mouthpieces, have talked in the very recent past. But that
was before the president walked into the quagmire called the
United Nations, which is designed to swallow initiative,
resolve and the good intentions of the unwary. This of course
delights the Europeans, who long ago perfected appeasement
as national policy, and this time there's no Maggie Thatcher to
warn the president, as she warned a previous President Bush
on the eve of Desert Storm in 1991, not to "go wobbly on us,
George."
In London, Tony Blair, only yesterday the unflappable ally
carrying a stick bigger than he was, began a coordinated Big
Backdown of his own. "Let the inspectors do their task," he
said. "I don't think there is any point putting an arbitrary date
on it."
Maybe not. Maybe the doves have been right all along,
that Iraq is no bigger threat than Haiti or Bhutan. Maybe
Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction are only a
delusion of hype and hot air. But that's not how either the
president or the prime minister were talking only a few weeks
ago, when George W. was warning the United Nations to
grow up or become irrelevant, and Tony Blair was talking as
tough as any sandbox soldier at Miss Adelaide's Academy
for Tots and Tykes.
Halfway around the world, George W.'s envoy to South
Korea is making promises to Kim Jong-il, offering new
goodies if the North Koreans will promise again to behave
themselves. If they just say they'll behave, they can do
whatever they like. It's how the world deals with North
Korea.
The White House insists that the concessions to
Pyongyang that Mr. Kelly is talking about are not really
concessions. They're still working on finding a word to call
them, which will make us all feel better. Bill Clinton, who
resolved a similar dispute by trading concessions for empty
promises a decade ago, turns out to be the unlikely author of
the new White House strategy.
Iraq and the war on terrorism is, after all, growing a little
stale. Dealing with the economy looks more interesting and
certainly more important. The sagging economy George W.
inherited is his own now. Bringing the troops home, after
marching them up the hill with flags flying and bands playing,
will be humiliating, but only for a week or two if he can get
the mills humming again. Maybe nobody will remember Iraq
and al Qaeda and Saddam and Kim Jong-il.
But even with his own man running things, the Senate will
not be the pushover the White House could imagine it was
only a fortnight ago. Some of the senators who voted for his
$1.6 trillion tax cut two years ago are making unhappy noises
this time. "It's a different environment," Sen. Ben Nelson, a
Democratic ally two years ago, told his constituents in
Nebraska over the weekend. "The president has thrown out
the first pitch, but you know, I'm not sure it's a strike at this
point."
Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, a partisan Republican
who is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, has a
similar word of caution. Trimming the income-tax rate for the
richest Americans from 38.6 percent to 35 percent, he says,
may be the hardest provision to get through the Senate.
It's the difference a month can make. The hero of
September 11, the straight-talking Texan who has shown no
patience with dorky Democrats, irrational Iraqis, fru-fru
Frenchmen, ungrateful Germans, misanthropic Muslims, kinky
Koreans and segregationist Southerners begins to look like a
stranger.
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