Deep Misgivings

Daniel Henninger, writing in the Opinion Journal writes about the deep misgivings he has about the naming of Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense. He points out that the "fresh eyes" that are being focused on the Iraq situation are anything but fresh.

The village elders on the Iraq Survey Group who will perform this duty are Lee Hamilton, Vernon Jordan, Ed Meese, Sandra Day O'Connor, Leon Panetta, former Clinton Defense Secretary Bill Perry, former Sens. Chuck Robb and Alan Simpson, and the secretary of defense designate, Robert Gates.

George W. Bush has in no way been an Establishment President. On both taxes and foreign policy, he broke with them, and did so decisively. So he ought not underestimate, with the firing of Don Rumsfeld and the odd selection of his father's CIA director, how much visceral pleasure this brings to the displaced Establishment between Georgetown and Manhattan.

Some Beltway pundits are now writing with smug satisfaction–but not without reason–that this marks the end of the Bush Doctrine, the idea that the U.S. could create opportunities for democratic self-determination in a region such as the Middle East. It is expected that the ISG's recommendation will carry with it the implicit conclusion that this goal has been too ambitious. And that it must give way now to a restoration of realism associated with Bush 41's secretary of state, Mr. Baker; with his National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft and the former president's CIA director, Mr. Gates. And with the return of established foreign-policy wisdom, the "neocons" associated with Mr. Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney and their "failed" ideas will be swept out to sea.

The post-Rumsfeld purge began yesterday. Sen. Joe Biden, now in the majority, announced that U.N. Ambassador John Bolton's stalled confirmation is "going nowhere."

The three or four men who are thinking of seeking the Republican presidential nomination had better focus now on the potential fall of the Bush Doctrine at the hands of the Iraq Survey Group. If they don't, one of them, on the first day of his presidency, will inherit a re-entrenched foreign policy–at State, the CIA and on Wall Street–with a vision of America's role in the world reduced to that of auto-shop fixit men. They "work" the world's problems.

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But what has distinguished Mr. Bush's foreign policy, more than the Bush Doctrine itself, was the sense and belief that he would not abandon an ally. You may not like that, and may have just voted against it, but this country's global reputation is as allied with the people of Iraq as it was with the left-behind people of Vietnam. Or in 1991, the Shiites in southern Iraq.

On Feb. 15 of that year, after routing Saddam's army in the south, President George H.W. Bush urged the Iraqi generals and people to "take matters into their own hands" against Saddam. Then on Feb. 27 came the White House order to Gen. Schwarzkopf to stand down and thus forgo the destruction of Saddam's tank army. The Bush 41 team expected Saddam's Baathist generals to finish him off and "stabilize" Iraq. That was realism. The secretary of state was Jim Baker and the deputy national security advisor to Brent Scowcroft was Robert Gates. Shortly, Saddam's systematic, tank-led slaughter began of the Shiites in the south and Kurds in the north. In April, U.N. Resolution 688 said the attacks "threaten international peace and security in the region." Mr. Gates acknowledged the miscalculation in the New Yorker last year.

This is what the Iranians and al Qaeda have wanted. The last helicopter. The return of realpolitik. A defeat for America. Houston, we have a problem.