Bush Mideast democracy vision having opposite effect

  In his second inauguration speech, George W. Bush stressed that terrorism could be defeated by promoting democracy around the world:

The concerted effort of free nations to promote democracy is a preludeto our enemies' defeat.

Whether you agree with the statement or not, if you use that standard as a litmus test for Bush's second term, we are losing the war on terror.  The Administration recently approved $13 billion in arms for Saudi Arabia, a dictatorship, and $15 billion for Egypt, also run by a dictator.

Jay Carney of Time asks whether Bush all of a sudden forgot the pledge he made in 2004:

Remember all that gauzy talk about bringing democracy to the MiddleEast? Remember how President Bush was going to abandon the policy,pursued by previous U.S. administrations for decades, of propping upauthoritarian regimes in the Middle East with military aid becausedoing so served our paramount interest in regional stability?

After Bush made foreign policy pledges in 2000 and 2004, the opposite happened.  In 2000, Bush warned against the evils of nation-building, but his behavior in the first term was quite the contrary.  In 2004, Bush backed the idea of supporting democratic movements in the Middle East, but instead he wants to increase funding for Mideast dictatorships in Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

The moral of the story?  Candidates running for president can promise anything they want.  Before pulling the lever in the polling booth, remember that a politician's track-record is more important than their rhetoric.

Comments

[George]

good post. Bush is a liar. His investment in democracy is directly proportionate to how much oil he gets out of it.

[granny]

Good story, and good summation.

And in the realm of track records, are we all aware of the new attack on FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) - even as he refuses to produce materials requested to investigate his last attempt to gut it?

Perhaps there is something marvelous in the audacity of it - the shock and awe?

And he used his radio address to put it out there. Those who gather round to listen to his radio address, I suspect, being the most vulnerable to his patronizing and lies.

So in a sense it comes to a lot of us already filtered through a screen of inherent fearfulness.

And not least among my concerns is the mounting reference to the possiblity of "new terrorist attacks" - and the obvious relationship to scaring us, and putting down opposition. Opposition that is mounting, and could come to a boiling point in mid-September.

Nothing like a "terrorist attack" to dampen people's appetite for resisting.

Looking mighty nasty. Mighty nasty.