Secretary of State Colin Powell is conducting a May 1 to 3 round of diplomacy (we are told) in the Middle East in order to advance Arab-Israeli peace. I have no high hopes for the results of this “diplomacy;” in fact, I hold no hope for success at all.
Last week former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich made an absolutely true, but startling assertion: The biggest obstacle to successful United States diplomacy is the U.S. State Department.
It is the duty of the State Department not only to help formulate foreign policy, but to aggressively and successfully assert it and publicize it throughout the world. Gingrich recapped in his address to the American Enterprise Institute how the State Department has fared with its public relations duty: 95 percent of the Turkish public opposed the United States in the Iraq war, the South Korean people view the United States as more of a threat than North Korea, and a vast majority of French and German citizens favor policies opposing the United States.
Is there anyone, anyone at all in the State Department who is looking out for American interests?
The State Department is paralyzing U.S. diplomacy with its insanity. Gingrich noted that at the lobbying of the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, the so-called “Road Map” to Middle East peace released this week by the White House was formulated and will be supervised by the United States, the United Nations, Russia and the European Union. If I remember correctly, it was the United Nations, the European Union and Russia that opposed the removal of the fascist and inhumane dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and his band of thugs. Now we are putting Middle East peace into the hands of the adamantly anti-Israeli European Union and United Nations.
As I asserted in an earlier column, the primary result of the Iraq war is a U.S. presence in the geopolitical heart of the Middle East. With a liberal democracy and U.S. military presence in Iraq, neighboring fascist regimes in Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia will feel strong pressure to liberate their people. This pressure is not the result of State Department diplomacy; this pressure is the result of successful military intervention by the Defense Department.
Some people in the State Department have no appreciation for the new geopolitical situation in the Middle East. Perhaps the State Department is inundated with students of political science departments who have no appreciation or understanding of geopolitics. Foreign affairs teachers in political science departments across the country should concentrate more on the field of geopolitics or risk continually supplying policy-makers with dangerously inadequate students and thus endangering national security.
On Secretary Powell’s itinerary is a stop in Damascus, Syria, for a chat with anti-American President Bashar Assad. Besides supporting anti-Israeli terror, Assad said not long ago in Syria’s official newspaper that peace in the Middle East is not possible as long as there is an Israel.
Assad was close, but he missed the mark. As long as there is a Bashar Assad in Syria, there will not be peace in the Middle East.
Powell reaching out to Assad threatens to crumble the strategic geopolitical advantage the U.S. victory in Iraq provided; meeting with Assad undermines President Bush’s policy that stopping anti-Israeli terror is necessary for the peace process to move forward.
After President Bush is re-elected in 2004, the cleansing and refitting of the State Department should be a top goal. I hate to say it, but Secretary Powell has proven he is hopelessly inadequate for the job, and he should consider retirement. The appointment of a new secretary of state who is truly focused on asserting American influence is needed, as well as the cleansing of the anti-Israeli and dictatorship-loving elements of the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs.
Rather than the failed U.S. secretary of state meeting with a Syrian President who has wished for the defeat of U.S. forces, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (who has been doing Powell’s job), should be planning the removal of Syrian President Assad and setting his scope on the leadership of Yasser Arafat’s terror-driven organization.