Only on Paper

Submitted by Avraham (United States), Oct 25, 2004 at 23:17

I agree that Bush has formally and overtly committed himself to all four of these radical policy shifts, and I thank Dr. Pipes for helping to enlighten me on these issues through his writings over the past few years. My personal opinion, nonetheless, is that Bush's commitment to SOME OF these changes is not substantive:

1) War over law-enforcement: he is substantively committed

2) Democracy over stability: he is still an Arabist like his father,
and he has made a pretext of democratizing only in the country that threatened his father

3) preemption rather than deterrence: in Iraq yes, but in Syria, Iran or elsewhere, no

4) Arab-Israeli: he is substantively committed to this change, but I am not sure that this change itself is a substantive one.

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