The New Bush Doctrine: "See You Next Week"

Did you catch the following through-the-looking-glass exchange regarding President Bush's appeal to the Israelis to withdraw immediately from the West Bank?

"I don't think that he meant exactly to say, 'Just get out,'" said Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer on ABC this Sunday.

"But he said 'without delay,'" replied an incredulous George Stephanopoulos.

"Yes, but I don't think that he meant that," insisted Ben Eliezer.

This stunning refusal to take the president of the United States at his word prompted National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, on her own round of the Sunday talk shows, to admonish the world "not to parse the president's words." But that's precisely what the world is doing -- and with good reason.

The president, after all, has been building quite a record of full-blooded rhetoric and anemic follow-through. One might even say it's starting to become his MO.

For instance, after urgently declaring last Thursday that "The world finds itself at a critical moment," "the storms of violence cannot go on" and "enough is enough," he announced that he would be sending Secretary of State Colin Powell to the region sometime "next week." I could have sworn I heard him add "or whenever he can get around to it."

Next week? Why wasn't a helicopter waiting on the South Lawn to immediately whisk Powell off to start his peace-keeping mission? Was Air Force One all booked up? Or did Powell have more important plans for the weekend? Dinner and a movie with the Mrs., perhaps?

Indeed, Powell is scheduled to make stops in Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, and Spain -- Spain? -- before finally heading to Jerusalem toward the end of this week.

The lackadaisical pace of Powell's departure was all the more unfortunate considering that what the president really needed was not Air Force One, but a time machine at the ready to send Powell to the Middle East of a year ago, when he might have stood a fighting chance of heading off the grisly horrors of the moment.

Is the president hoping that the Israeli army kicks it into high gear and rounds up all the Palestinian bad guys before Powell touches down? Maybe the Secretary can buy Mr. Sharon's forces a little extra time when he checks into his hotel -- y'know, throw some water on his face, check out the cable channels, the snacks in the mini-bar, that kind of thing.

Despite the efforts of his inner circle to paint the post-9/11 president as the rough riding, straight shooting, second coming of Teddy Roosevelt, the events of the last six months have actually revealed him to be the anti-Teddy -- a politician who speaks very loudly while, more often than not, carrying a very small stick. Or having someone else carry it sometime "next week."

Take the Bush Doctrine, that marvel of philosophic and moral precision that has now been amended, parsed, redacted and clarified into a murky mush. The thing now has more footnotes than an annotated version of "Remembrance of Things Past," more clauses than a Donald Trump prenup, and more exceptions than the desperate girl's edition of "The Rules."

"Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists," said Bush on Sept. 20. And as recently as two weeks ago, he reiterated the importance of sending an unambiguous message to the world: "I said that if you harbor a terrorist, you're just as guilty as the terrorist; if you feed one or hide one, you're just as guilty as those who came and murdered thousands of innocent Americans."

But then he kneecapped himself by giving Yasser Arafat a "get-off-our-terrorist-list-free" card. According to the president, even though the Palestinian leader has done considerably more than feed or hide terrorists, he isn't one himself because, along with his involvement in numerous terrorist assaults -- including the 1983 bombing in Beirut that killed 241 Marines -- he had "negotiated with parties as to how to achieve peace." Oh, that changes everything.