October 20, 2003, 10:15 a.m.
“‘Mother, May I?’ Madeleine”
The former secretary of state’s vision.

Madeleine Albright took to France the other day to criticize President Bush for a foreign policy "that is not good for America, not good for the world." Albright is part of the Democratic foreign-policy establishment that reflexively wants to give France a veto over U.S. foreign policy, so she couldn't have picked a better location — despite its unseemliness by the usual standards of decorum in such matters — for her statement of dissent.

Albright, like other Clintonites, recoils from any policy that upsets France. This is why her former boss repeatedly made the same statements about Saddam's threat as George W. Bush did, but did nothing about it when he had as little luck as Bush at getting France and Russia to approve of the U.S. taking action. So, what would Albright do now, to prosecute the terror war and reform the Arab world?

For insight into that and into what, in Legacy: Paying the Price for the Clinton Years, I call the Clinton foreign policy of "McGovernism without the conscience," we can turn to Albright's recent opus in Foreign Affairs titled, "Bridges, Bombs, or Bluster?" In it, she reveals her foremost tool at this time of national peril would be to ask: "Mother, may I?"

She concedes that "The creation of a stable and united Iraqi democracy would be a tremendous accomplishment, with beneficial repercussions in other Arab societies." Thus, she buys into the central geopolitical justification for the war.

She further writes, going way beyond what most left-wingers or even Democratic presidential candidates are willing to say: "I credit Bush for his ambition and for taking political risks he did not have to take. I harbor no doubts about his sincerity. I agree with him that the United States cannot be complacent." These are all qualities — international ambition, sincerity, non-complacency — that her boss notably lacked.

Then she concedes the obvious, "Although I was proud of the Clinton administration's foreign policy, and I understand that democracy cannot be imposed from the outside, I regret not having done more to push for liberalization within the Arab world."

But she opposed the war in Iraq as a means to change the Middle East. So, what would she do to promote liberalization in the Arab world? "Reinforced by a united Europe," she writes, "American officials would have pressed over time for the gradual opening of Arab political and economic systems and for support for the democratic changes that surveys suggest most Arabs want. Washington would also show its respect for the value of every human life by staying engaged on a daily basis in the uphill struggle to halt killing on both sides in the strife-torn Middle East."

In other words, she would have jaw-boned the Arabs, and pressed Israel for more concessions in the face of a terrorist assault. This is an exact duplication of Clinton foreign policy in the 1990s, except at least Albright says this time she would have at least talked about democratic change. How bold!

Where does such empty talk get you in the Middle East? Albright sort of provides an answer: "We must be relentless in shaping a global consensus that terrorism is fully, fundamentally, and always wrong. No exceptions, no excuses. I made this argument to Arab leaders many times when I was secretary of state. The responses, however, were rarely satisfactory."

Wonder why.

How Albright would have talked someone like Saddam Hussein into liberalizing is left a mystery. France and Russia were committed to — and were succeeding at it in the 1990s — getting Saddam out of his "box" of containment, and his influence was steadily increasing. This enabled him to fund Palestinian terrorists and generally promote Arab radicalism, while providing daily proof of the impotence of the U.S. In this environment, Albright's gentle pleas for liberalization — "Oh, please Bashar, Oh please mullahs, be nice!" — would have meant nothing.

Read her piece. It shows why it's such a wonderful thing that she is out of office, and carping from a safe distance in France.

— Rich Lowry is author of Legacy: Paying the Price for the Clinton Years.

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