The Republican flip-flop

Fareed Zakaria points out how the views of the Bush Administration toward Iraq seem to have changed for the better, and calls them "hopeful omens" for the future. If John Kerry did this, we'd never hear the end of it.

In his prime-time speech last week, George W. Bush hit all his familiar themes -- we must show resolve, stay the course, finish the job, etc. But it masked a very different reality. Over the past three weeks the Bush administration has reversed itself on nearly every major aspect of its Iraq policy. Thank goodness. It's about time. These shifts may be too late to have a major effect, but they will help. The administration has finally begun to adhere to Rule No. 1 when you're in a hole: Stop digging. But it needs to go further and move decisively in a new direction. Consider the magnitude of recent policy reversals:

• The administration had stubbornly insisted that no more troops were needed in Iraq. But today, there are 20,000 additional soldiers in the country.

• From the start it refused to give the United Nations any political role in Iraq. Now the United Nations is a partner, both in the June 30 transition and in preparing for elections. U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi was the "quarterback," Bush said yesterday.

• Radical "de-Baathification," the pet project of the Pentagon and Ahmed Chalabi, has been overturned. The army that was disbanded is being slowly recreated.

• Heavy-handed military tactics have given way to a more careful political-military strategy in Fallujah, Karbala and Najaf that emphasizes a role for local leaders.

Imagine what Iraq might have looked like if these policies had been put in place 14 months ago. Iraq policy has been wrested from the Pentagon and is now being directed by Robert Blackwill, a diplomat on the National Security Council. Blackwill is a smart, aggressive, effective problem-solver who has little time for ideology or ideologues. Because he had no previous history or baggage on Iraq, he has been trying to focus on getting it right rather than proving that his original theories about it were right.