Foreign Policy

We're now entering the fourth week of the "CSI: Benghazi" hostage crisis. That's how long an FBI forensic team has been trying to gain access in Libya to what the State Department still calls a crime scene -- the Obamaadministration's preferred term for the location of the first assassination of a U.S. ambassador since 1979 and the first successful al-Qaeda-backed attack on U.S. soil since the Sept. 11 strikes. (Our embassies and consulates are sovereign U.S. territory.) It is perhaps not accidental that the State Department cites the need to complete the investigation as an excuse to stay silent on the whole matter.

The United States has not won a war since 1945. We have been involved in numerous conflicts and our military has performed magnificently — considering the political interference and (mis)direction endured.  This interference has caused us to lose (as in the case of Vietnam) or come to a draw (as in the case of Korea) or had victories given away (as we are now witnessing in Iraq). We are following the same formula of failure in Afghanistan. Never in the past 66 years have we come to the political point where we could claim the capitulation of an enemy.  The result of this has been an erosion of international respect that has negatively affected our ability to use international coalitions or the threat of military action as effective suasion.

How would Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon react if they were still alive? Or Ronald Reagan if he were not afflicted with Alzheimer's disease? Or, more to the point: What do Gerald Ford and George Bush have to say about the assault of the Republican-controlled Congress on presidential power over foreign policy?At least Mr. Bush's national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, has registered his disapproval of GOP attempts to micromanage U.S. relations with nations that kindle Cold War animosities among GOP meddlers and isolationists.

MEDFORD, Mass. -- Recently, when Texas Gov. George W. Bush failed a little pop quiz on foreign affairs thrown at him by a Boston reporter, it was widely regarded as a gimmicky cheap shot. But Mr. Bush's failure nevertheless fanned questions about his qualifications in the foreign-policy field.His political strategists immediately swung into action, producing a major foreign-policy speech that won modest praise for their candidate as he laid down a basically conservative line on how he would conduct U.S. international affairs.

EVERYONE'S IDEAL of a hyphenated-American foreign policy used to be Jewish. Once President Truman put United States policy on the side of creating Israel, mythic things were said about the power of the Jewish vote or finance in American politics.That was not the first ethnic bloc seeking to influence foreign policy, but it eclipsed predecessors. In recent decades, this influence was vitiated by splits in the American Zionist community paralleling splits in Israeli politics on issues of land and security.

Washington -- EVERY YEAR the nation's capital finds new "truths" about foreign policy, and this last year one of them has been the idea that dramatic or emotional TV coverage of foreign crises now dictates policy. The less-than-perfect American and U.N. intervention in Somalia is often mentioned as a case in point.I've had trouble with that idea from the start, even when U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali mentioned it to me in several interviews as a new factor in world power, one that was making his life even more miserable than it already was.Now, wonder of wonders, some genuine truths are emerging from the question, "Is television forming foreign policy in this new age?"

With 1,800 Marines due to land in Somalia at dawn tomorrow, what President Bush has begun will be President-elect Clinton's to finish. Even if some withdrawals are completed by Inauguration Day, if for no other purpose than to fulfill Mr. Bush's self-imposed timetable, uniformed U.S. military personnel are likely to be in the Horn of Africa for a long, long time. It will be Mr. Clinton's task to define their extended mission, decide when it is over, determine whether Somalia is to be a prototype for U.S. interventions elsewhere and, if the need arises, conclude when and where he will make new overseas commitments.

Don't look now, but the U.S. is experiencing something unusual in its recent history: a moment of bipartisan consensus on foreign policy. Over the last month, President Barack Obama has launched initiatives in areas that were flash points of contention only a year ago: winding down the war in Iraq, escalating the conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan, negotiating with Iran, renewing efforts to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinians, and seeking...

Republicans on Capitol Hill have pulled back just in time from their ill-considered attempt to limit a president's authority as commander in chief of the armed forces. The move was out of character for a party that since World War II has been steadfast in its internationalism. It was based not on constitutional principle but on a partisan urge to capitalize on President Clinton's foreign policy ineptness in Bosnia, Haiti and, especially, Somalia.Former Sen. Barry Goldwater, the GOP's 1964 presidential nominee, rightly said he can't understand the "mistakes" Senate Republican leader Bob Dole has been making in trying to curb the president's power to commit U.S. troops to Haiti or Bosnia.

Suddenly, things are looking up for President Clinton's foreign policy. After months of bumbling during which his world leadership was questioned at home and abroad, two dramatic triumphs seem to be unfolding in Haiti and Iraq. When these are combined with the quiet success this administration has attained in working for Israeli-Arab peace, staying out of the Balkans and building acceptable relations with Russia and China, Mr. Clinton has grounds for hoping both his record and reputation may be in a turn-around stage.