BUSH'S NATIONAL SECURITY AGENDA


While the rambling second half of the SOTU drifted off into election-year pandering and incoherence, in the first half Bush painted a clear picture of his national security policy.


Continuing to turn to Aschcroft, not Ridge: On the domestic front we got a plug for a renewed Patriot Act, and not much else. Considering the continued gaps in domestic security funding (and the political way that funding is doled out - shafting NYC isn't going to cost Bush the election), it appears Bush will continue to rely on the Justice Department to catch and hold (idefinitely) the right people.


Speak Loudly and Carry a Big Stick: Line of the night most misunderstood by liberals was the following: "for diplomacy to be effective, words must be credible..." Liberals immediately linked the term credible to the Iraq WMD debate on which the Bushies have a serious credibility problem. But that's not what Bush was talking about at all. He meant credibility as to whether or not America would back up its threats with the use of military force. On that point, the toppling of the Saddam regime speaks for itself, and as Bush rightly noted, spoke quite loudly to Gaddafi.

Islamic Terrorism is a Military, not a Legal Problem Yes, some Democrats actually do want to "serve our enemies with legal papers" (The latest example being General Clark's latest comment on Saddam Hussein). I'm not sure what it is precisely that attracts liberals to approach terrorism from the same perspective as narcotics control, but two guesses are (1) the unwillingness to accept the ideological aspect to the conflict - that the violence is not in the name of profit, but power; and (2) the standard globalist fallacy of confusing the relative decline of state actors in an increasingly global world with their irrelevance.


Rejection of Multilateralism for Its Own Sake: The "permission quip" while cute was a bit of unfair caricature of the Dems actual position. Unfortunately, in their anit-Bush zealousness, the Dems are moving steadily towards such a ideological embrace of multilateralism. This is particularly ironic in that the central critique of Bush is that he embraces ideologically-driven unilateralism. However, for better or worse, the pragamatism of the Powell Hamiltonians has tempered the passion of the Neocons & Jacksonians. Bush is right therefore to trumpet working through the U.N. on America's terms over working through the U.N. on France and Germany's terms.


Democratization:
Bush rightly placed democratization of the Islamic World as a centerpiece of anti-terrorism strategy. The silence of the Democrats (outside of Lieberman) on this issue is deafening.



So, there we have it. Bush will fight Islamic terror by coercing the direct sponsors by force or the threat of force to cease their support, and by drying up its roots by promoting democracy in the region. Given that much of the international community does not see Islamic terror as an ideological issue (but rather as a law-and-order concern), the U.S. has not and will not wait to get everyone on board before acting. So far this strategy has kept the enemy off-balance and unable to strike. Bush is clearly counting on that to continue, because the Patriot Act and color-coded signs isn't exactly a comprehensive back-up plan.