Kristol and Kagen argue that (foreign policy-wise, at least) Bush is back on track — and that Colin Powell’s exploits in the Mideast may have provided the impetus for the President’s rediscovering his clarity. Maybe:

[…] we understand that helping Israel fight its war was not exactly the point of Secretary Powell’s trip. Nor, unfortunately, was this President Bush’s intention when he ordered Israel to stop and withdraw two weeks ago, saying ‘enough is enough.’ But Sharon saved the Bush administration from itself by not listening. More specifically, he saved the president from his advisers, who over the past month have behaved as amateurs in this moment of high stakes diplomacy. We’d love to know which of the president’s top foreign policy advisers assured him that Sharon would obey a command to withdraw, and thereby set up Bush for his weakest moment since September 11.

Now it appears the president is following his own instincts again. Once Powell had returned, Bush swung back behind Israel, declaring Sharon a ‘man of peace,’ and implicitly endorsed the continued confinement of Arafat and the continued military occupation of Ramallah and other Palestinian areas. While praising Sharon, the president returned to his condemnation of Palestinian terrorism, blaming the Arab states and Yasser Arafat for doing too little — actually, nothing — to stop it. After four weeks of moral and strategic confusion that threatened real damage to American interests, the president seems to have found his way out of the wilderness. He has rediscovered the Bush doctrine.

But as Saddam Hussein has ordered his top nuclear scientists to accelerate their work, Kristol and Kagen intensify their worry that Bush and Co. haven’t done enough to prepare for an invasion of Iraq:

There is not much sign of urgency in the planning for an invasion of Iraq, no organized effort to support the Iraqi opposition, no public diplomacy to speak of either at home or abroad, no pressure on our Arab ‘friends’ to make their choice between supporting us and supporting the terrorists.

This past week, President Bush returned to his Axis of Evil rhetoric, and we were glad to hear it. But words aren’t enough anymore. It’s time to act. We need to begin right now taking practical and visible steps toward the removal of Saddam Hussein. It’s surely time to order the Pentagon to prepare a battle plan that can be executed before the end of this year. Time to instruct the secretary of state that his top priority now is preparing allied support for action against Iraq. Time to begin the serious arming and training of the Iraqi opposition. Time to rid the Middle East of a vicious predator who is working full time to get a nuclear bomb.

The Arab world, many Europeans, and some Americans hoped that the Middle East peace process would absorb the Bush administration’s energy, and delay or thwart any move against Iraq. Their coordinated effort to drag the administration into peace-processing, and away from war-preparing, worked for much of the past month. The administration shouldn’t allow itself to get sidetracked again.