- The White House stumblebum team played fast and loose
this week - rushing headlong into every crisis, their loose lips risking
greater tension, fear and panic in a world that was trying to cool it.
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- Along the way they angered, upset or confused the Israelis
and the Palestinians, and European and Arab leaders who want to see more
effective world leadership in settling the Middle East conflict; the warring
Indians and Pakistanis; and an anxious American public and increasingly
testy Democrats in the war on terror.
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- The latest embarrassment was yesterday's backflip by
the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, on whether or not al-Qaeda terrorists
were fomenting the volatile tension over Kashmir. First the terrorists
were in there, now it seems they are not.
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- Mr Rumsfeld set his own trap after talks with the Indian
Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, this week when he told reporters:
"I have seen indications that there are al-Qaeda operating [in Kashmir]."
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- But after meeting yesterday with a furious General Pervez
Musharraf, and others in the Pakistani leadership who made little effort
to hide their ridicule of the Defence Secretary for being suckered by Indian
propaganda, Mr Rumsfeld backed down.
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- This time he tortured the language as he told reporters:
"We do have a good deal of scraps of intelligence that come in from
people who say they believe al-Qaeda are in Kashmir or are in various locations.
It tends to be speculative, it's not actionable, and it's not verifiable."
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- It is not surprising that the Indians, who want Washington
to believe they each face the same enemy in their war on terror, would
tell a visiting American that al-Qaeda was involved. It is staggering that
Mr Rumsfeld bought it with little or no qualification.
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- The Bush Administration also did a spectacular backdown
in the case of the dirty bomber. On Monday, a triumphant Attorney-General,
John Ashcroft - in a live TV hook-up from Moscow - announced the US had
"disrupted an unfolding terrorist plot" to strike America with
a dirty radioactive bomb. He spoke of "mass death and injury"
and Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz warned of imminent danger to
"thousands of Americans".
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- The alleged dirty bomber, in custody in the US, subsequently
was described as a "scout" who was thought to be looking for
targets but who did not have the materials to make a bomb and did not appear
to have a target.
-
- In the face of widespread criticism that Mr Ashcroft
had ramped the story to take the heat -off the FBI and CIA for their intelligence
failures, and to prod Congress into passing the latest Bush anti-terrorism
plan, Mr Wolfowitz was much more circumspect a day later. "I don't
think there actually was a plot beyond some fairly loose talk," he
said.
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- And White House sources leaked to USA Today that Mr Ashcroft
had been reprimanded for exaggerating a threat which was known to be minimal.
-
- And then there is the Middle East. The Secretary of State,
Colin Powell, spent much of this week's meeting of G8 foreign ministers
in Canada insisting that he and his department were not at war with virtually
the entire Bush team on Middle East policy.
-
- Ministers from Canada and Europe expressed frustration
at Mr Bush's policy flip-flops and his inclination to accept the Israeli
view. One said: "We are all waiting for the President to speak."
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- This was a reference to a speech by Mr Bush, possibly
early next week, in which he will set down the latest version of his policy
on the Middle East.
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- This week he comforted the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel
Sharon, agreeing with him that Palestinian violence had to stop before
there could be progress towards peace, and sharing his sentiment that the
Palestinian Authority was a spent force. But a couple of days later he
called Mr Sharon to say he was in favour of setting up a provisional Palestinian
state.
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- And when Mr Powell gave an interview to a London-based
Arab newspaper this week - saying there would be a summit and that he would
chair it, that the Palestinian leadership was an issue for the Palestinian
people and that Mr Bush was committed to a Palestinian state - he was publicly
dismissed by White House spokesman Ari Fleischer for parroting the views
of foreign leaders.
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- Mr Bush tends not to be too concerned with the thinking
of European leaders. But he will be offended by rising criticism in Britain,
where Prime Minister Tony Blair is one of his stoutest international supporters.
-
- Yesterday the Guardian quoted senior British official
complaints about Washington's "vague and meaningless" anti-terror
warnings that were so exaggerated they only caused panic and amounted to
gratuitous propaganda victories to the terrorists.
-
- One official had said the US refusal to acknowledge the
Geneva Convention in the aftermath of the Afghanistan war was "not
the benchmark of a civilised society".
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- But the reality of the Bush presidency is that no policy
is fixed without an internal war, and increasingly it seems Mr Powell is
pitted against a hawkish band that includes Vice-President Dick Cheney,
Mr Rumsfeld, Mr Wolfowitz and, more often than not, National Security Adviser
Condoleezza Rice.
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- It appears Mr Bush allows the team to pull him every
which way with their competing views, leaving the decision to lock in on
policy to the latest possible minute. It is about that time now on Middle
East policy.
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- Mr Powell has been able to slow the White House lunge
for a new war against Iraq, but if the president's inclination to go with
the Israelis and to abandon the Palestinians is the foundation to next
week's speech, the pragmatic Mr Powell may have difficulty dealing with
it. The Secretary of State has been the only one in the team to fight for
the peace process. What survives in the policy may influence who survives
in the team.
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- Copyright © 2002. The Sydney Morning Herald.
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