Just about ten years ago, under a different President Bush, we emerged out of a major foreign
policy crisis in the Middle East with the most advantageous position we had had since World
War II. We had led a broad coalition to victory against Iraq. In the process, we demonstrated that
we could be a strong and reliable friend of the Arab world, and we created many of the
conditions that made a peace process possible. We created the conditions for military
containment of both Iran and Iraq, we had the firm support of our European allies, and we built
bridges to Russia and China that allowed us to act together in dealing with peace and security
issues in the Middle East.