Writing
about the aftermath of Benghazi, I cited his National Security Adviser’s interview with the New York Times three
days ago, headlined “Rice Offers a More Modest Strategy for Mideast.” It was
published on Saturday, clearly not designed to excite maximum reaction.
Yet,
unless I misread it, Susan Rice was whispering a drastic change in American
foreign policy. “We can’t just be consumed 24/7 by one region, important as it
is,” she said, adding, “He [Obama] thought it was a good time to step back and
reassess, in a very critical and kind of no-holds-barred way, how we conceive
the region.”
The
result, according to the Times: “The
blueprint drawn up on those summer weekends at the White House is a model of
pragmatism — eschewing the use of force, except to respond to acts of aggression
against the United States or its allies, disruption of oil supplies, terrorist
networks or weapons of mass destruction. Tellingly, it does not designate the
spread of democracy as a core interest.”
Say
again? Wouldn’t the “blueprint” rule out or severely limit the use of force
against Syria or, depending on interpretation, even Iran?
If
there is no wink and a nod to go with this, John McCain and Lindsey Graham
should have gone ballistic. Yet so far, there has only been silence. Even if
they don’t believe the President means what Rice says, they should be
fulminating over this unwarlike stance by someone they vilified to block her
nomination as Secretary of State.
It
would be sad if a real turn away from further military involvement in the
Middle East were overwhelmed by the current news cycle of outrage over the
Administration’s spying on citizens and allies.
At
the very least, there should be an A for its effort to stop shedding American
blood into a bottomless pool.
“We
can’t just be consumed 24/7 by one region, important as it is,” Ms. Rice says.
Just
so, and that deserves headlines it has not received.
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