Hirsh: Bush Takes Another August Vacation While “Peace And History Could Be Hanging In The Balance”...

Newsweek Michael Hirsh August 23, 2006 at 05:26 PM
READ MORE: George W. Bush, Arctic Wildlife Refuge, Saddam Hussein, Lebanon, Iraq

This is as dangerous an August as I can recall, at least since Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait 16 years ago. The Europeans are dithering over contributions to a peacekeeping force while a dangerously unstable Lebanon slips into a "security vacuum," in the words of United Nations envoy Terje Roed-Larsen. Iran is stringing along the West in negotiations as it rushes to perfect the nuclear fuel cycle--which could occur as soon as the next several months--while bidding skillfully for regional hegemony. North Korea is hinting darkly at a nuclear test after firing off missiles. And Iraq is, well, say no more.

It is the sort of moment when peace and history could be hanging in the balance for a generation to come--the kind of tipping point when American presidents can no longer leave the negotiating to underlings. They must take the world stage themselves to find a new way out, simply because no one else has the globo-oomph to do so. There is a grand American tradition behind this sort of personal involvement of America's chief executive, one that goes back almost precisely a century. Teddy Roosevelt spent much of August 1905 directing talks in Portsmouth, N.H, that prodded Japan and Russia into an agreement ending the Russo-Japanese war. Woodrow Wilson went to Paris for nearly six months between January and June of 1919 to negotiate the end of World War I. Franklin Roosevelt, though he was dying and suffered a terrible physical disability, flew halfway around the world to hash out the postwar peace at Yalta. Richard Nixon went to China, Ronald Reagan journeyed to Reykjavik and Jimmy Carter holed up at Camp David, where he tested the limits of brinksmanship with Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat.

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