President Bush spoke yesterday at the United Nations of an “unfinished war” and of “no neutral ground” between supporting terrorism and fighting against it. But he made his speech on neutral ground itself, and he himself seemed in his remarks to shy away from enumerating the tasks needed to press the campaign to a full victory. He made only veiled reference to the consequences facing those who either support terrorism or refuse to fight it. And in one key fight in the war on terror, that in which Israel is engaged, Mr. Bush in his speech went for the neutral ground himself.

“The Palestinian people deserve their own state, and they will gain that state by embracing new leaders committed to reform, to fighting terror, and to building peace. All parties in the Middle East must meet their responsibilities and carry out the commitments they made at Aqaba. Israel must work to create the conditions that will allow a peaceful Palestinian state to emerge. And Arab nations must cut off funding and other support for terrorist organizations,” Mr. Bush said.

The reason that Mr. Bush speaks in such vague generalities is that his own top foreign policy advisers do not agree on a foreign policy. What does this mean,”they will gain that state”? What if the Palestinians don’t fight terror? Mr. Bush is making rosy predictions rather than conditional offers. In the Middle East, such remarks may even be interpreted as promises. And what does Mr. Bush mean,”Israel must work to create the conditions that will allow a peaceful Palestinian state to emerge”? The “must” sounds like a demand. Israelis may say they are creating the conditions for a peaceful Palestinian state by assassinating terrorist kingpins. The State Department may say the “conditions” involve uprooting Jews who live in Judea and Samaria.

It was all a sharp departure from Mr. Bush’s own forthright and apparently unscripted words in an appearance Thursday at Camp David with the Hashemite king. It was enough to make someone think that either the time spent with Abdullah changed Mr. Bush’s mind or that the speech yesterday was written for Mr. Bush by someone who had missed what the president said last week.

Mr. Bush went on yesterday to speak of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction — without mentioning Iran or North Korea. It was a stark contrast to his speech last year laying out a detailed case against Iraq. The president spent the rest of the talk bemoaning, at length,”sex tourism involving children.” This is no doubt a grave concern, but if we really are in an unfinished war and there really is no neutral ground, as Mr. Bush says, the president needs to name America’s enemies, stop sending mixed signals to our friends, and get on with making the case for the full victory that is required for our security.