Transcript
FLYNT LEVERETT: Thank you very much. Thanks to all of you for coming out
on the Thursday before a holiday weekend creeps up on us. I was very pleased to have the
chance to edit this volume. We--the participants in the project--offer it very much in a spirit of
constructive criticism, and I hope that both the adjective and the noun are equally valid in terms
of the work that we've put forward.
I think that all of us who were involved in this project share a sense that this is a
potentially historic presidency with regard to the impact of the Bush Administration's foreign
policy on the part of the world that we are focused on, the Middle East. You certainly cannot
fault President Bush for lacking what his father once so famously derided as the "vision thing."
The President has laid out a truly ambitious agenda, really an agenda for remaking the part of the world that we deal with. And in many ways, I think you have to hearken back maybe even past
Ronald Reagan, but to Woodrow Wilson before you come upon a President who has articulated
as ambitious a foreign policy agenda as this one has.
That being said, the Wilsonian metaphor, or comparison, is instructive, because
in the end, President Wilson was not able to achieve all that he set out to achieve, and finished
his presidency with his agenda largely unrealized.
I think it's fair to say that most of us are supportive of most of the core aspects
of President Bush's agenda for the Middle East. Certainly, we are all in favor of a very vigorous
prosecution of a War on Islamist Terror. We are all strongly supportive of the Administration's
non-proliferation goals. We are certainly all in favor of an Arab-Israeli peace settlement.
I think, for the most part, we are supportive at at least a general level, conceptual
level, of the idea of promoting reform in the region, although frankly this is one issue on which
you would find a range of views among the contributors to this volume.
I think, in large part, we share the goals of the Administration, but I think that
many of us have real concerns that without some serious course corrections, some serious
tactical adjustments, some serious strategic rethinking in some ways, the President runs the risk
of not being able to fulfill or achieve the agenda that he has laid out.
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