Finding A Corner To Paint Yourself Into

By all measures, they have succeeded famously. NYTimes (07.15.06):

"By and large, the Bush administration has sought to deal with the Middle East in bold strokes, emphasizing regime change and democracy but spurning the garden-variety diplomacy of mediating conflicts between Israel and its rivals. One tenet of that approach is that certain countries — Iran in particular, but also Syria — are such rogues that they should be ostracized, not engaged." U.S., Needing Options, Finds Its Hands Tied

"But now, as cross-border attacks between Israel and the militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah threaten to ignite a wider conflict, President Bush and his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, are confronting the limits of the course they have chosen." This is rich: the "value of the Bush approach has been its moral clarity and consistency, eschewing, in a post-Sept. 11 world, any deal-making with those thought to support terrorists." Value? It has value in that it was morally clear and consistent? What fucking nonsense. The Bush approach was naive and without nuance. It's was simpleminded and shortsighted. And now all that's left are empty threats by empty suits. The bluff has been called, friends. Our foreign policy, such as it's become, is in the open now, and it's as pathetic as it is embarrassing. What a bunch of rubes these people are. "The Bush administration’s policy of not talking to rogue regimes 'takes you only so far, until you do want something from them,' said Robert Malley, a Clinton administration official and negotiator in the failed Camp David talks, who is now the Middle East program director at the International Crisis Group." At that point, they pretty much just laugh at you.