One of the best illuminations we have seen of what is wrong with the Bush administration on the foreign policy front occurred yesterday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. As our Marta Hummel reports at page one, the deputy secretary of state, Richard Armitage, was asked by Senator Hagel,”Regime change in Iran, is that our policy?”The answer, from the no. 2 official at the Department of State: “No, sir.” By way of explanation later on, Mr. Armitage said,”We can’t force something on people who want it less than we do … They’ve got to come a ways internally.”

This is flawed in at least three ways. First, one of President Bush’s main principles has been that all humans want freedom basically the same amount. It is a fundamental human desire. Second, the anecdotal evidence from Iran is that the people there are desperately yearning for freedom now. Finally, it’s not “forcing”anything to say yes to people who are begging for American support in their struggle for freedom. The Iranians have already come a long way from the 1979 revolution, to the point where some American aid in the form of laptop computers, copy machines, cellphones, and cash could help topple the regime that is the world’s foremost state sponsor of terror. We did as much for the people of Poland in the 1980s, and they are still grateful. Had President Reagan and Lane Kirkland sat around handwringing about how we can’t force freedom on the Poles, Gdansk would probably still be under martial law.