Editorial Democracy at home & abroad
Baumann, Paul
Democracy at home & abroad Bold. Visionary. Idealistic. Courageous. These were just a few of the adjectives used by supporters to describe President George W. Bush's November 6 speech before the...
...His answer has been to recast the reasons for war...
...Bush issued only the vaguest of reprimands to these "allies," and there were no specific suggestions for how Saudi Arabia or Egypt could be held accountable for making progress toward democracy in the future...
...Ronald Reagan's stand against the evil empire is the paradigm...
...support for dictatorial regimes in the Middle East...
...Next year's presidential election promises to be an ugly culture war, with both parties pandering to their core constituencies...
...It is the right and the capacity of all mankind...
...These were just a few of the adjectives used by supporters to describe President George W. Bush's November 6 speech before the National Endowment for Democra-cy (NED) in Washington, D.C...
...That was good, even surprising...
...The Bush administration's willingness to coddle an increasingly autocratic Vladimir Putin and to turn a blind eye to Russia's war in Chechnya was also noted...
...Grandiose, hypocritical, simplistic, even cynical were the words deployed by skeptics...
...What is not compelling is Bush's history of enunciating similarly bold initiatives only to abandon them when political sacrifice is required...
...Reports from Capitol Hill suggest that the acrimony and mistrust between the political parties has reached a worrying intensity...
...Perhaps it could start to acquire those virtues by first practicing them at home...
...Listening to the president's ringing call to spread democracy abroad-even his praise for "labor unions and independent newspapers and broadcast media"-it is hard to forget how he conducts himself as a democratic leader at home...
...We believe that liberty is the direction of history," he said...
...Wasn't the lesson of the cold war that containment, rather than military engagement, worked...
...Now Bush claims that transforming Iraq and the rest of the Middle East into democracies is the best way to fight terrorism...
...Politically, Bush has done little to bring together a nation deeply divided by the last presidential election...
...Commentators across the Middle East were quick to point to this double standard, and to the hesitancy of the United States to condemn Israeli violations of human rights and liberty...
...Little, apparently...
...casualties mount in Iraq and the prospect of a relatively short, smooth transition to democracy dims, the president is confronted with the manifold contradictions of his policies...
...President Bush can be eloquent, and the vision of a more democratic world outlined in his speech is compelling...
...It doesn't help that the day Bush delivered his speech boasting of the willingness of Americans to make sacrifices, it was announced that U.S...
...With fewer U.S...
...troops, only limited Iraqi participation, and still little international or UN presence, the "policing" of Iraq does not promise to get easier...
...As U.S...
...And we believe that freedom, the freedom we prize, is not for us alone...
...At every opportunity he has acted to promote the interests and placate the passions of his conservative base...
...What implications does such an admission have for our current relationship with authoritarian governments such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt...
...The extended detention of illegal immigrants raises similar concerns, as does the open-ended imprisonment of suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay...
...In prosecuting the war on terrorism, the president has denied the most basic constitutional rights to U.S...
...troop strength in Iraq would be reduced in time for next year's elections...
...In his speech, Bush compared the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the transformation of Iraq into a democracy to the long struggle for freedom the West waged first against fascism and then against the Soviet Union in the cold war...
...From judicial nominations to environmental regulations and tax policy, Bush has governed as one of the most partisan presidents in recent memory...
...The president speaks well of democracy in the abstract, but when asked to forge a consensus among real democratic states-or between political parties in Congress-he is rather less keen on the democratic virtues of persuasion and compromise...
...citizens simply by designating them "enemy combatants...
...Bringing democracy to Iraq and beyond will require more humility, and a greater tolerance for compromise, than the Bush administration gives evidence of possessing (see E. J. Dionne Jr., page 8...
...Are the cold war and the war against terrorism really analogous in the way Bush suggests...
...Nor is it possible to forget the contempt the Bush administration had for the UN Security Council...
...Having convinced the American people war was justified because Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) posed an imminent threat, he must now explain why no WMD have been found...
...In his speech to the NED, for example, Bush criticized the history of U.S...
...The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution," Bush said...
...Eloquent words not followed by action create only doubt about the integrity of the speaker...
...Republicans have not hesitated to question the patriotism of anyone who criticizes the administration's conduct of the war on terrorism, nor have they been circumspect in exploiting their majority status in Congress...
...It was only a few months ago, for example, that the president unveiled his "road map" to peace for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying he was going to put his prestige and authority on the line and use his powers of persuasion to bring about a cessation to the violence...
...Yet the occupation of Iraq appears to be in disarray, the United States has never been less popular in the Muslim world, and the administration's failure to speak honestly to the American people of the cost of this war, both monetarily and in human life, has undermined popular support for staying the course...
...Much of what the administration claimed about the necessity for war with Iraq is now discredited, so it is not surprising that many doubt the president when he issues rhetorical assurances about America's dedication to liberty and democracy...
...Given Bush's obsequiousness toward Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, most knowledgeable observers rightly doubted the administration's commitment to acting as a fair broker in a notoriously intractable dispute...
...Within a month, it was evident that the so-called road map led nowhere...
Vol. 130 • November 2003 • No. 20
