Sometimes we lose sight of the the forest for the trees. But that’s why we have The Weekly Standard’s Fred Barnes, who takes a step back and is able to review Bush’s foreign policy pronouncements from a critical distance. And I have to admit that Bush’s pronouncements do look quite remarkable from afar, especially in the context of past foreign policy positions (well, at least a little over a decades’ worth):

Bush’s stunning change in Middle East policy [the call for regime change and democracy] is his fourth major foreign policy pronouncement in less than a year. Let’s review the bidding. On September 20, he declared his sweeping war on terrorism and those who abet it. In his State of the Union address on January 29, he singled out the “axis of evil”–Iraq, Iran, and North Korea–for defeat. Last month at West Point, he downgraded deterrence and containment and adopted a new strategic doctrine to combat terrorist: preemption. And now there’s a new policy toward Israel and the Palestinians. In each case, it looked like Bush had lost control of events. But it turned out he hadn’t.

Okay, so that last line might be a stretch — we don’t know yet that Bush will stick to his guns, and whether he does or not makes all the difference — but I’d agree with Barnes that this has been quite a year for re-conceptualizing America’s place in the world, at least in the abstract.

Now, to follow through. I think the Bushies are on the right track: the mention of Syria, the pointed acknowledgment that we recognize and condemn the anti-Israel, anti-American hatred being cultivated by our so-called moderate allies, Egypt and Saudi Arabi, the call for a change in leaderhip among the Palestinians — these were bold pronouncement from Bush’s speech on Monday (though I think many in America would like to see Dubya take more of a hardline against the House that Crude Built).

Only time will tell, of course. But ideologically at least — and viewed from a critical perspective — there’s not a whole lot to disagree with here.