World Media: Bush Inaugural a Jolt
By Jim Bencivenga
So when Mr. Bush made it clear on Thursday that he was not about to "turn back from his doctrine of taking pre-emptive action, in the interests of American security (or, as he would put it, American freedom)" as the BBC characterized his speech, there was little room for noted British understatement in the headline of the Beeb's stellar roundup - "World press electrified by Bush vision."
'Hold on to your hats, this may be the most ambitious presidency ever.' That's the message from one Israeli paper [Haaretz] after President George W. Bush's inauguration - a message echoed across the world's press.
For China's press his speech raises the question whether Washington will head further down a 'unilateral' path in foreign relations.
One Polish paper heralds the speech as the dawn of a conservative revolution, while in Germany and Turkey there's a bleak forecast for the new Bush era.
Perhaps, the most telling phrase by Bush was: "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands."
Kenya's Nation, and Ireland's Irish Independent bookend the range of international response to the specific theme of American liberty gone global.
Bush's speech focused on the 'power of freedom', saying that the best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world. On that, not many people will disagree. The differences are over what he understands by 'freedom' and how the benefits of democracy should be spread in the world - or indeed whether it is any country's business to export democracy to others... It is possible to have the freer world that Bush speaks of, but the idea that those who are strong and have a larger arsenal have an unchallenged right to impose their will on the weak, undermines democracy. - Nation
Critics who were hoping that he would get mired in detail about Iraq were mistaken. Instead he went back to basics, reaching out to the belief of most Americans in the fundamental importance of freedom and using that to explain his policies at home and abroad. At times it sounded more like a sermon than a speech. Mr. Bush may not be much of a speaker. But sometimes the message is more important than eloquence and what he had to say yesterday had the power of real conviction. - Irish Independent.
Iraq was never mentioned by name, yet its recent history resonated when Bush applied Abraham Lincoln's words: "those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and, under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it" to his own phrase "the rulers of outlaw regimes."
This was too much for The Toronto Star which called such language "unabashedly aggressive." And though "delivered from the west steps of the US Capitol... tailored for world capitals."
The BBC viewed such words as "warning bells... ringing in foreign capitals such as Tehran and Damascus."
Such warnings can be couched in history, and history is always on stage at inaugurals.
Friday's lead editorial in The Wall Street Journal approvingly, said as much.
Not since JFK in 1960 has an American President provided such an ambitious and unabashed case for the promotion of liberty at home and abroad. ...The entire speech was about Iraq, as a way of explaining to Americans why the sacrifice our troops are making there is justified.
Offering a decidedly different and longer view of history, China's official newspaper, People's Daily warned against American historical intent.
No banquet under the sun will last forever. After the firework fades away Washington is still under a dark sky. The sole superpower sends a sense of inauspiciousness to the world when it's president is inaugurated under wartime security standards: America, where [are] you heading?
... Judging from Bush's inauguration theme in 2005, being morally conceited and militarily aggressive are two major elements of American nationalism.
People's Daily took the opportunity of the inaugural speech to offer its readers a different history lesson on the American character. Here is the English translation of that article.
American nationalism displays the following characters.
First, it is originated from the worship to 'The American Creed', with liberty, democracy and the rule of law lying at its core. The Creed takes form along with the shaping and developing of the country, but has been taken by many Americans as a truth or standard that 'fits all'. From a religious perspective, many Americans indulge themselves in a sense of superiority, believing themselves 'men chosen by God.'
Second, due to the nation's superior natural and geographical conditions, and its history of never being invaded, American nationalism is void of historical bitterness found in typical nationalism of some other peoples.
Third, American nationalism shows a strong inclination of being self-centered, a combination of an isolationism tendency (being disdain to associate with other peoples) and a sense of mission to save 'the fettered world' by whatever means it desires. American nationalism rejects nationalism in other peoples, which doesn't, or unwilling to learn other people's emotions and thoughts, but adopts American standards in all cases.
Fourth, in foreign policy, American nationalism takes a form of a mixture of morality and pragmatism. Sometimes America holds ideology as the benchmark, deciding a friend or foe by American values, beliefs and political considerations; sometimes it exercises double standards for the sake of national interest, showing a certain degree of moral hypocrisy.
Much more empathetic with the Bush administration's take on history, the Times of London editorialized:
The US will continue to regard the threat posed by radical Islamists, the dangers of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the behavior of rogue states such as North Korea with more urgency than France and Germany. These countries should ask themselves whether their assessment of these perils is so much more modest because of evidence, or the inconvenience that acknowledging their intensity would entail. They might also ponder what it is about the promotion of freedom that they regard as so alien and objectionable.
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Arabs Say U.S. Rhetoric Rings Hollow
By Scott Wilson
The Washington Post
Saturday 22 January 2005
Amman, Jordan - President Bush's inaugural address placing the fostering of democratic freedoms around the world at the center of U.S. foreign policy drew a skeptical reaction Friday in the Arab world, where analysts questioned whether the rhetoric of the speech was consistent with the administration's actions in the Middle East.
With Arab countries mostly shuttered for a four-day Islamic holiday that marks the end of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, there was little public reaction to Bush's address. Many newspapers have not published for days, and government offices closed earlier than usual this week.
In interviews, however, a number of political analysts and commentators commended the values outlined in Bush's speech, in which he proclaimed that the United States "will persistently clarify the choice before every ruler and every nation, the moral choice between oppression, which is always wrong, and freedom, which is eternally right." But they said the words belied the fact that the United States supports several authoritarian governments in the Middle East and would ring hollow to the many Arabs who perceive U.S. policy in the oil-rich region as motivated by financial concerns and support for Israel.
Although the president did not mention the daily violence in Iraq and in the Palestinian territories, the U.S. role in those conflicts frequently spurs Arabs to question American credibility regarding the goals Bush outlined in his address. Several writers called the speech "messianic" in tone and language and potentially harmful to fledgling reform movements across the region.
"It's scary stuff, so sweeping and overarching you don't know what to make of it," said Sadiq Azm, a Syrian writer and reform advocate. "He's saying that what's good for America is good for everyone else. We are used to this kind of bombast from our Arab leaders. But it's been a long time since I've heard it in English."
Bush's speech came as some Middle Eastern governments - most of them kingdoms, emirates and Arab republics ruled by unelected leaders - are considering how to balance the pressure to implement the kinds of reforms called for by the United States with their desire to maintain a firm grip on power. Many are emphasizing economic reforms to relieve domestic pressures caused by rising unemployment but moving cautiously - if at all - on political changes.
Saudi Arabia plans to hold limited municipal elections next month that will serve as a test case for what voting might mean for the ruling Saud family, which founded the kingdom more than 70 years ago. Syria and Jordan have adopted free-market changes in the past year while maintaining a tight hold on political dissent. A number of Persian Gulf states have allowed greater public displays of political opinion, including free elections for local councils in Bahrain.
But the pace of change has been glacial, and many frustrated reformers say the apparent disarray of the U.S. project in Iraq has given autocratic governments an excuse to forgo even the most modest political reforms. Offering a clean-government alternative to administrations rife with corruption, Islamic parties are surging in popularity, a trend that deeply frightens many secular Arabs and dampens their enthusiasm for free elections.
Many Arabs, including some involved in democratic reform movements, also say the U.S. record of alliances in the Middle East is at odds with Bush's agenda. The United States supported Saddam Hussein in the 1980s during Iraq's long war with Iran. The Bush administration has applied steady pressure on largely resourceless Syria, including economic sanctions for its military presence in Lebanon, while leaving alone the ruling family of Saudi Arabia, which sits atop a quarter of world's petroleum reserves.
"What he said is great, and we completely agree," said Abdulaziz Alsebail, a professor of modern literature at King Saud University in Riyadh and part of a reform movement in Saudi Arabia that is nudging the ruling family toward allowing more public participation in politics. "But the question is: How can you impose freedom? Is military intervention the right way to do it? I don't think it's been a very successful attempt at all."
Some analysts welcomed what they saw as a renewed commitment to diplomacy in Bush's speech. But others said the rhetoric, while stirring, failed because it lacked specifics of how the U.S. goals of political freedom would be reached.
"Are we going to see more military intervention, or are we talking about something like a Marshall Plan?" said Mohamed Alayyan, publisher of the al-Ghad daily newspaper in Amman. "To achieve this objective, the perception of the people in the Middle East must be changed, especially regarding the Palestinian dilemma and the treatment of prisoners of war. You cannot forget the effect Abu Ghraib had on American credibility here."
Azm called Bush's language "Churchillian, but at a time without an adversary as serious as the Nazi regime." He said the speech would likely alarm governments such as Syria's, already fearful of U.S. military intervention, as well as the reform movement that has been pushing Syrian President Bashar Assad to allow for more open government.
"People will see in this the old civilizing mission, the old colonialism," Azm said. "He has adopted the reformers' agenda, but in such a messianic way that even we are not ready to go that far."
Several analysts and activists said Bush's assertion that the United States would be encouraging reform in other governments "by making clear that success in our relations will require the decent treatment of their own people" would be best served by brokering an equitable solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
A number of governments in the region operate under decades-old emergency laws, which Syria's government justifies by Israel's occupation of the Golan Heights. The laws give the military and domestic security services broad powers to arrest political dissidents, authority that might vanish if the two countries were to achieve peace.
"The best way to begin any reform is to solve this problem," said Adib Dahdouh, a Christian lawyer in Damascus who is part of a movement that advocates the gradual implementation of a free press, institutional reform and open parliamentary elections.
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Freedom's New Ring: War on Terror Recast
By Roger Cohen
The International Herald Tribune
Saturday 22 January 2005
New York - When was it exactly that the war on terror morphed into the war on tyranny?
I do not recall, and I suspect the process has been more one of osmosis than abrupt transformation. But anyone with a lingering doubt that America's focus, or at least its rhetoric, has shifted should take a close look at President George W. Bush's inaugural speech.
The phrase, war on terror, so effective in galvanizing Americans to vote Bush, did not appear. Nor did Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, Iraq, weapons of mass destruction, terror networks or other favorites of the post-9/11 presidential lexicon. In their place came freedom (a word used 26 times), liberty (12 times) and an impassioned call to banish oppression.
I have nothing against freedom, believe me. On the contrary, I believe it is the only decent basis on which to build a society. Nor do I have any doubt that Bush is sincere in his embrace of liberty. But as Senator Joseph Biden, a Democrat, remarked this week, overthrowing the tyrant Saddam Hussein "was not the rationale for going to war when we went to war."
In other words, idealism has grown in the White House as the politics of Iraq have demanded it. Because there were no chemical or biological weapons in Iraq and the existence of such weapons was the principal reason advanced for the war, the removal of the despot Saddam became the central justification for the invasion.
The advance of liberty supplanted the curtailment of terror; more precisely, they became one and the same. As Bush said Thursday in the ultimate refinement of his doctrine: "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world. America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one."
You have to admire the ingenuity of this. America's long foreign-policy struggle between its values and interests resolved! No more tension between the global fight for democracy and the Realpolitik that could make Stalin or some Latin American despot allies when it mattered! Woodrow Wilson and Henry Kissinger embrace and make up! Freedom equals security! Bingo!
But hang on a second. Is it really in America's "vital interest" to force democratic change in Saudi Arabia or, for that matter, in Pakistan or Egypt? Would such change necessarily make America safer? As the 1920s and 1930s illustrated in Europe, it is precisely when old structures of government are threatened that radical and violent ideologies may exercise the most appeal.
It is also worth recalling that Richard Reid, the would-be shoe bomber of American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris to Miami in 2001, came from Britain, a country scarcely a stranger to liberty.
Mohammed Atta, a mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, lived for about a decade in Hamburg. It was in this beautiful Western city, a center of free trade since the times of the Hanseatic League, rather than in his hometown, Cairo, that he became an Islamic jihadist.
The dismantling of several radical Islamic cells in Europe in recent years, not least in Spain, has provided no evidence that free European societies coaxed would-be terrorists from their intent. If anything, it was rather the perception of moral decay in a free and freewheeling West that drove the radicalization of Muslim youths.
The fact is, the rhetoric of freedom has a ring to it and sits comfortably within an American narrative that places the United States in the role of beacon to the world, but fighting Islamic terror is more complicated than, and rather different from, the spread of liberty. They are not one and the same, convenient as that would be.
Bush did say America "would not impose our own style of government on the unwilling," adding that the goal of ending tyranny was not "primarily the task of arms." He also conceded that other countries may defend freedom with institutions that "reflect customs and traditions very different from our own." These comments appeared designed to reassure an anxious world and had the effect of moderating the ringing freedom-is-the-answer message.
But Bush and his designated secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, have also made clear that a central test of their new effort to reach out to Europe would be the extent to which European-American cooperation advances freedom, especially in the Middle East. "America and the free world are engaged in a long-term struggle against an ideology of tyranny and terror," Rice told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
What will Europe make of this? Recent events in Ukraine suggest that the European Union and Bush's America can work together effectively, at least in Europe, to spread freedom. But the very broadness and vagueness of the mission Bush has now given his country in the name of fighting terror causes some alarm.
"We need to be a little more precise," said Wolfgang Ischinger, the German ambassador in Washington. "Fighting for freedom is not enough. If that means going out and being a missionary, Europeans may not want to buy into that. But if it means resources to cooperate with governments and societies that wish to be cooperated with, then yes. The push for liberty has to come from within."
Put more bluntly, if spreading freedom means bombing Iran, Europeans would say, "No, thank you." If spreading freedom means trying to engage with Iranians, even the mullahs, Europeans would get behind that. The war on terror is an expression that proved deeply divisive. But there is no guarantee the war on tyranny will fare any better.
What is now clear is that the global pursuit of freedom is the device Bush has chosen to recast America's response to the Sept. 11 attacks. Absent bin Laden and Iraqi nuclear weapons, liberty moved center stage. Such politics do not make the goal less noble, but its attainment and America's safety may not be synonymous.
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