MARINA DEL REY, CA--George Bush once said of his own malapropisms, "My mouth is where words go to die." Some of his recent contradictions suggest more ominously that his brain is where foreign policy principles go to die.

How else can one explain, asked Robert Tracinski, columnist for Creators Syndicate and senior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, why Bush would vow to destroy any government that sponsors or harbors terrorists, yet demand the creation of a Palestinian state--a terrorist dictatorship? Why would Bush threaten (rightfully) to use nuclear weapons if needed against terrorist dictatorships, yet allow Syria onto the UN Security Council? Why would Bush order the destruction of al-Qaeda holdouts in Afghanistan, but angrily withdraw his support for Israel because they rounded up terrorists in Palestinian refugee camps? Why would Bush vow to overthrow Saddam Hussein, but coddle Yasser Arafat?

"What is missing from Bush's policy is the guidance of long-range, abstract principles," said Tracinski. "Where Bush goes weak is when he encounters any threat to the United States that is complex or long-range. At his best, Bush seems to have a basic, emotional-level pro-American outlook, the moral confidence to brand our enemies as evil, and a belief that this country is good and deserves to be defended. But to achieve lasting success in the War on Terrorism, America needs principled leadership. It needs a president who can see beyond immediate concretes, like Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, and think in terms of the moral precedents he sets and their long-term consequences. From this perspective, Bush's Israel policy is becoming a disastrous failure."

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Robert W. Tracinski was a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute between 1997 and 2004.

 
The Ayn Rand Institute, an educational organization established in 1985, seeks to advance novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism and its principal tenets: reason, rational egoism and laissez-faire capitalism.