I’ve often jokes that the axis of evil wasn’t a phrase, it was a menu. Now that we are past the soup course, Bush doesn/’t seem to know which fork to use.
Peter Scoblic is the former editor at Arms Control Today and now Executive Editor at The New Republic. Paul Kerr and Wade Boese, Peter/’s former colleagues at ACA, think the world of Scoblic, who started at TNR in June 2003–after the magazine/’s shameful role in the rush to war. Scoblic has penned an article pointing out:
In numerous speeches and documents, the administration has laid out a security strategy. It holds that weapons of mass destruction in the hands of rogue states and terrorists are the most serious threat we face today, that those threats should be preempted, that rogue states should not be bribed to comply with their international commitments, and that the United States will deal with them unilaterally if necessary. Yet, in his dealings with the Hermit Kingdom, Bush has abandoned each of these precepts, one after another.
Scoblic points out the daylight between rhetoric and reality and respects the reader to draw conclusions.
The total lack of direction on S2R* policy implies something also evident in our lack on an Iran policy: Behind the Clint Eastwood impression is a feckless and indecisive leader, unable to referee disputes among his cabinet.
The tough talk is a substitute for, not evidence of, a tough policy.
*Secretive Stalinist Regime.
