Just got through watching the President's speech at the American Enterprise Institute. Just one quick impression, and the thing that jumped out at me about the speech was Bush's finally articulating directly one of the clear but unspoken goals of the action against Iraq - that it will make more likely an end to the Israel/Palestinian question. While many have been crying for "linkage" between Israel and Iraq, what they obviously wanted was for us to impose a solution on the Israelis and hope that that made the rest of the Arab world feel more spiffy towards us. Well, they're gonna get that, but in the opposite (and correct) order. First, let's get some stability (that means through democratic institutions) in the region, put some pressure, some serious pressure on the Arabs to curb terrorism, and then we'll talk about a Palestinian state and Israeli concessions.


Other than that, it was good to hear Bush continue to articulate the hard line. Without that, you can never expect our allies to rally with us.