Rice and Bush are trying to offer the Middle East a new opportunity--one separate from the patronizing imperialism of the European imperialists who controlled the area in the 20th century. Europeans were content to regard the people as quaint and exotic.Their literature and art is full of this. They left the land scarred, and the people poor and uneducated.
I shudder when I see so called "humanitarian" aid from those UN NGO's roll in. A worker proclaimed he had five tons of "high protein biscuits" for Liberians. Sounds like dog treats to me--probably surplus food from subsidized Europeans who take five week vacations and let old people die. Or...three bags of food delivered to a family of four in Iraq: dried beans, wheat, corn--enough food for a month. Now sit in your hut in the sandstorm and have a nice life! We will be back next month.
This is the vision of the future offered by the so-called "international community"--the liberal alliance forged after WWII at Yalta.
Bush and Rice have indeed suggested a more authentic foreign policy for America. We separate ourselves from the imperialists and mercantilists. Let the Iraqi's run thir own country and let them use their money to develop a decent standard of living. They can spend their money on refrigerators and airconditioners instead of arms from European arms dealers.
I do think, though, it would be good to get those global warming people people in there and get them working on cooling it off by replanting the mountains with trees and stopping the sandstorms--undoing the devestations that their forefathers who have been running back and forth through that part of the world for thousands of years have wrought. ie the Europeans might pay reparations and restore the garden of Eden.