Bush Jnr moves to avoid repeating sins of his father

President George Bush decided to make a U-turn in his approach to the Middle East out of fear that violence there is spinning out of control and might destabilise a region he must rely on to press his war on terrorism.

It could also sabotage his own standing in the opinion polls and the worry is, in part, that he could suffer the fate that befell his father, whose presidency was destroyed by perceptions of weakness.

For too long, Mr Bush thought he could coast along by deliberately being out of touch on the Middle East cauldron. He was riding the wave of support for his firm and confident handling of the post-11 September campaign against international terrorism. His advisers were solidly behind him and he was plagued by no ambiguities, paradoxes or contradictions.

But in the case of the Middle East, his foreign policy team was not of one mind as they had been after the atrocities against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. There were all-out hawks, fence-sitters, interventionists, cautious toe-dippers.

Even on Wednesday, only hours before the president announced his dramatic shift of policy, fierce arguments were going on among his advisers.

Mr Bush discovered that his spontaneous remarks about the situation did him more harm than good, and at times were material for the sort of merciless satire that ruined his father.

How good he can be when reading someone else's words was illustrated yesterday in his tough, perfectly non-ambiguous statement outlining a new direction for the US. A move from hands-off, to deep involvement.

Part of the reason for his stumbling is that he tended to see Israel's situation as similar to that of his own in crushing the terrorist network with brutal efficiency.

An aide who worked in the White House until very recently told me that in the early days of the Middle East catastrophe, Mr Bush had told Ariel Sharon he "could give him four days" - a licence to deal with the Palestinians as he saw fit.

"I can hold off the United Nations for that length of time," he quoted Mr Bush as saying. So Mr Bush at first looked the other way when Israel invaded the West Bank. But Secretary of State Colin Powell laid down the law, saying the Palestinians must not suffer the destruction of their cities.

There must be a political solution even before a ceasefire can be put in place.

That flew in the face of the Bush administration's adamant position that the violence had to diminish before the first steps could be taken toward negotiations.

Only last week, the president's spokesman said Mr Powell would not be going to the region. This alarmed some of Mr Bush's political friends on Capitol Hill who are becoming increasingly worried about the rising price of crude oil and its effect on an eroding stock market.

His U-turn and his almost shockingly direct criticisms of Israel's harsh tactics in responding to atrocities against its own civilians, marks a decision not to go along with the rhetoric of Mr Sharon. One senior US official said the speech was "an inyourface message to Sharon to call off his assault".

Instrumental in moving Mr Bush from hands-off to hands-on were damning press analyses of the damage apparent indifference to the Middle East tragedy could do to his very survival.

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal ran an article by Albert Hunt, a respected and moderate critic of the administration, who called the president "clueless" and raked him over for a list of weak and mawkish actions, inaction on the Middle East being only one of them.

Hunt added: " The public embrace of Mr Bush's leadership is softening."