Natalie Gonnella
While Secretary Clinton urges Egypt to pursue democratic reform, pundits and bloggers from all sides have weighed in with their own critique of both the ongoing unrest in the Middle East and the Obama Administration's response.
And in what may be a hard pill for some to swallow (President Obama included), conservatives this week have repeatedly echoed one key point in their evaluations of the situation: In one way or another, President George W. Bush was right.
While varied in their assessments and application of President Bush's "freedom agenda," here's a look at what they had to say:
Peter Feaver, Shadow Government:
Some recent pieces (especially some by Elliott Abrams) reinforce an important point: The harsh reality of events in the Middle East have all decisively proven that the assumptions that underpinned President Obama's Middle East policy initiatives were wrong. I have great sympathy for the administration as it tries to respond to events that are swirling out of control in the region. The foreign policy team seems to be quite uncertain how to proceed and with good reason: our ability to predict what will happen is probably even less than our ability to shape what will happen. However, when the administration is finally able to catch its breath, it would be well-served to do a strategic inventory. The results will be tough to swallow, especially for a team that has made so much political hay out of mocking what they considered to be faulty assumptions embraced by their predecessors. But an honest accounting will show that the last two years have rather dramatically rebutted the four core premises of Obama's approach to the region.
Pete Wehner, Commentary Magazine:
During the course of the Bush presidency, his “freedom agenda” was criticized from several different quarters, including foreign-policy “realists” who believed that the bargain Bush spoke about — tolerating oppression for the sake of “stability” — was worth it.
It wasn’t. The core argument Bush made, which is that America must stand firm for the non-negotiable demands of human dignity — the rule of law, limits on the power of the state, respect for women, private property, free speech, equal justice, and religious tolerance — was right. No people on earth long to live in oppression and servitude, as slaves instead of free people, to be kept in chains or experience the lash of the whip.
How this conviction should play itself out in the real world is not self-evident; the success of such a policy depends on the wisdom and prudence of statesmen. Implementing a policy is a good deal harder than proclaiming one. Still, it seems to be that events are vindicating the freedom agenda as a strategy and a moral insight, as even the Obama administration is coming to learn.
Elliot Abrams, Washington Post:
"Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe - because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty," Bush said. "As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment and violence ready for export."
This spirit did not always animate U.S. diplomacy in the Bush administration; plenty of officials found it unrealistic and had to be prodded or overruled to follow the president's lead. But the revolt in Tunisia, the gigantic wave of demonstrations in Egypt and the more recent marches in Yemen all make clear that Bush had it right - and that the Obama administration's abandonment of this mind-set is nothing short of a tragedy.
Jay Nordlinger, NRO's The Corner:
Oh, yes. The final chapter is far from written. But the Middle East is writing some important words today. In the summer of 2009, the democratic protesters in the streets of Tehran chanted, “Obama, Obama, either you’re with them [meaning the mullahs’ regime] or you’re with us.” The U.S. president was basically silent. There is no question about where George W. Bush stands. [His American critics] — the type of American I know all too well — might have said, repeatedly, “Democracy is overrated.” But I don’t think so. Bush doesn’t think so. And the people in the streets of Cairo and other Egyptian cities don’t think so."
Jennifer Rubin, Right Turn in the Washington Post:
The left blogosphere seems to have wigged out over the suggestion that George W. Bush and the successful emergence of a secular, democratic Iraq has anything to do with all this. For starters, it is amusing to see that those voices, fresh from the smear on conservatives regarding the Arizona shooting, are now all about "causation." But more seriously, had democracy failed in Iraq, had the country descended into chaos, and had Iraqis laboring for a secular, democratic Muslim country been killed and exiled, do we imagine this would have been good for the prospects of democracy elsewhere? Recall that it was the left that said that democracy was alien to the Middle East. Bush was right; they were wrong. And the notion that democratization and rebellion against despotic regimes do not spread regionally after a successful experiment is belied by history (e.g. Central America, Eastern Europe).
Lee Smith, The Weekly Standard
On Thursday night Vice President Biden told PBS's "Newshour" that Mubarak wasn't a dictator, which is probably going to anger a lot of those same Muslim masses his boss has been courting ever since he delivered that Cairo speech in 2009. No doubt Biden's remarks are drawing chuckles from the Bush administration, which loathed Mubarak. It is interesting to wonder what might have happened had these same protests erupted 5 years ago when the Bush White House was feeling its oats with victories for the freedom agenda in Iraq and then Lebanon.
Smith later continues that:
The Bush NSC was constantly at odds over Egypt with the State Department, where the bureau of Near East affairs, headed then by one-time ambassador to Cairo David Welch, argued that Mubarak was a pillar of regional stability. Whether or not Mubarak is good for U.S. national interests, the Bush White House is now proven right in at least this one regard: The regional status quo is not stable. Who knows what might have happened 5 years ago, had the streets of Cairo been burning and Bush had suggested to the Egyptian president that it was time to step aside?
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