The Limits of Patience
Please, Condi — stop taking Brent Scowcroft’s calls.

October 2, 2001 11:30 a.m.

he Washington Post yesterday reported that Brent Scowcroft, impresario of foreign policy in Bush I, is quietly logging occasional calls to Condi Rice and others in the Bush administration, urging patience.

Please, Condi — stop taking his calls.

Scowcroft's patience appears to be impervious to any shock, even this, the most catastrophic attack on the American homeland ever. For Scowcroft and other hyper-realists like him, patience is more than just a temperament, it involves a view of American power and the world.

The key to Scowcroft's worldview is the notion that conflict among states is inevitable. The goal of foreign policy should be to minimize it through focusing on considerations of power, rather than on distracting and potentially destabilizing attempts to influence the internal politics of other nations.

There is much to be said for this view, for the essentially conservative way it views reality (as difficult to change and full of lurking unintended consequences) and the way it steers the U.S. clear of purposeless international do-goodism.

But in Scowcroft's mind this view has frozen into an ideology that values stability over all else, so his response to the September 11 massacres is to advocate more of the same: the same Taliban regime in Afghanistan, the same Saddam in Iraq, the same attempts to cozy up to Iran, and the same efforts to constrain Israel.

If The Onion were to write a parody of the Scowcroft/Baker/Bush I response to this crisis this would be it. Here's the Post's rendition of Scowcroft's views:

He believes that overthrowing Saddam Hussein is not feasible. His reluctance to engage in regime change extends to Afghanistan, where he says it would be simpler diplomatically to send U.S. forces in to snatch bin Laden. Scowcroft also favors building a strong coalition of Arab nations, even if that means applying more pressure on Israel to exert restraint in its conflict with the Palestinians. And he believes the United States should make every effort to reestablish a constructive relationship with Iran, arguing that the United States should not be simultaneously at odds with the two most populous Persian Gulf states.

For Scowcroft, like Candide, this is the best of all possible worlds, and any attempt to change a regime must inevitably create an even worse regime. So, American policy must be resigned to the sheer immovability of the current lineup of foreign governments.

But the application of American power can turn the world quite plastic — the Taliban is collapsing before our eyes just from the threat of American strikes. Sure, American power has its limits. We can't end, say, ethnic hatred in the Balkans for all time, but surely we are capable of establishing the kind of autocratic, but pro-Western governments that have existed in the Middle East in the past.

This, of course, would require regime change, which makes Scowcroft's palms sweaty with anxiety. Imagine the instability. But some things are worse than instability. And there are regimes so nasty — the Taliban, the Baathists in Iraq — that they are worth ousting at almost any cost.

Yes, this will involve making value judgments about these regimes, and invoking moralistic rhetoric about both their external and internal politics. But this shouldn't be confused with indiscriminate international do-goodism. It would represent idealism tethered firmly to a strategic goal: ending some (and the scaring the hell out of other) state sponsors of terror.

Scowcroft and people who think like him don't understand that values are an indispensable support of American power, and trying to wield it without resort to them is unrealistic indeed. In the case of Afghanistan, the tents and food packages with American flags on them may be as important, in their way, as our smart bombs.

Scowcroft's views may seem a sidelight in the current crisis, but if the Bush administration pulls up short in the war on terrorism it will certainly be on Scowcroftian grounds. May its patience be limited.

Friedman Unleashed
I've never been a fan of Thomas Friedman, but he has really risen to the occasion in the current crisis, including his current number contrasting the strength and spirit of American society to the desolate vision of Islamic radicals.

Operation Let's Roll
"Operation Infinite Justice" was an utter failure as a name. "Operation Enduring Freedom" is better, but not by much — bloodless somehow, with a distinctly bureaucratic ring. Why not call it "Operation Let's Roll," commemorating the first American action against the terrorists over Pennsylvania and capturing the can-do spirit that should characterize our fight?