About that quagmire. . .

New York Post

It's amazing: The New York Times editorial page yesterday had something positive to say about the present occupant of the White House.

Not President Bush by name, of course. That would be going too far.

But the paper of record acknowledged "truly astonishing" things are happening in the Middle East — noting dryly that "the Bush administration is entitled to claim a healthy share of the credit for many of these advances."

The paper — which has bitterly opposed Bush policy in the greater Middle East both in its opinion pages and its news columns — even conceded "there could have been no democratic elections [in Iraq] this January if Saddam Hussein had still been in power."

The Times could say the same about the Afghan elections; apparent progress in Israeli-Palestinian relations; Hosni Mubarak's decision to liberalize Egyptian politics and the Lebanese demonstrations — though it chose not to.

There are no guarantees that any of the remarkable events now unfolding in the greater Middle East will lead to anything beyond more heartbreak and bloodshed.

But it's also true that none of it would have happened if Bush had toed the Times' foreign-policy line since taking office.

It was only a month ago that the Times editorial page was decrying Bush's "shortsighted hands-off policy in the Middle East" and expressing sympathy with the view that "America doesn't give a whit about whether the Palestinians ever get their own state."

Last fall, the paper accused the president of just "standing by waiting for a new, less compromised Palestinian leadership to somehow emerge miraculously to replace" Yasser Arafat.

That, said the Times, "is not a policy. It is an abdication of leadership that costs Israeli and Palestinian lives, deepens mistrust and makes an eventual peace that much harder to achieve."

Now, it turns out, that policy — and that's exactly what it was — enabled the Palestinians to understand that a "new, less compromised leadership" post-Arafat was their only chance to achieve their political objectives.

The Times blithely waved off the belief of both Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that Arafat was not a genuine partner for peace — that, said the paper three months ago, was merely a convenient "excuse" to justify "abandonment of the peace process."

Bush, it said, had "failed" when it came to showing "American leadership."

Not surprisingly, the paper's position echoed what was once pushed by the new chairman of the Democratic Party, Howard Dean. As a presidential candidate, Dean demanded that America "not take sides in the Middle East" and show more "even-handedness."

Last November, the Times bemoaned the appointment of Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state, calling her "a loyal servant of Mr. Bush's agenda and worldview."

That agenda, of course, was the declaration of the cause of Middle East democracy — something the Times yesterday conceded was "bold" and foresighted.

As the paper noted: "Few in the West thought it had any realistic chance."

Including, of course, the Times itself.

The Times being the Times, it couldn't resist taking a shot at President Bush even while patting him on the back.

"Washington's challenge," it wrote, "now lies in finding ways to nurture and encourage these still fragile trends without smothering them in a triumphalist embrace."

Actually, we trust the president to stay the course on which he already has so skillfully set out and which is producing such earth-shaking results.

But if George W. Bush wants to indulge in a "triumphalist embrace" or two along the way, what's wrong with that?

He's certainly earned the right.