It's easy to hold a current politician to the standards of a simpler past, but it's not smart to expect a real person to live up to the expectations of daydreams.
Most certainly and the same can be said of Washington should he be here today.....
but to compare current times and events to the past really can't hold much weight. Especially when going back that far.
When you talk about the standards of a simpler past, you apparently choose to overlook the fact that the Washingtonian argument in the debate was a more complex one than was Mr. Bush's. Washington dealt with ageless truths of human nature, and the psychology involved when people play favorite nation games with our foreign policy. Your comment really makes me doubt that you even read what you are commenting on.
IMHO, Washington would have no problem with reaching out and "touching" those who posed a threat to his country. He had no problem with military activity along the frontier. If he had to kill people he would have. If he could change their policy through other means, he would have done that as well.
Washington was not vain enough to pretend to speak for what future generations should or should not do in specific situations other than to caution about "entangling alliances". The only such alliance I can think of today is the UN charter which entangles us with an organization that does not have our best interests at heart --- in fact, just the opposite.
Washington's Farewell Address is one of the most misused of our historical documents. It was produced at a time when THE MAJOR political issue in the US was agitation by the radical Jeffersonian party to ally with France and declare war on Great Britain. That would have been a disaster that would have likely ended the nation. Washington correctly warned against taking sides in that conflict since nothing but disaster could come from it for the United States. There was no upside. It was not in our interest.
He correctly understood that nations do not have friends, they only have interests, and in 1797, the interests of the US did not lay in war with England, just as France's interests (or perceived interests) today do not lie in war in the mid east. US interests in the Mideast lie in removing current threats to our nation AND in changing the status quo to preclude future more serious threats. France's interests, monetary and geopolitical, lie in maintaining the status quo. Removing various despots in that region would be removing many of Frence's biggest customers and long time business partners.
Washington's message today would likely be totally different than in 1797 --- albeit, he would still not think much of the French aside from Gen. Lafayette.