Below, I am going to analyze one of Bush’s answers in today’s joint Bush-Blair press conference. Here’s the question.
QUESTION: Mr. President, both of you, I’d like to ask you about the big picture that you’re discussing.
Mr. President, three years ago, you argued that an invasion of Iraq would create a new stage of Arab-Israeli peace. And yet today there is an Iraqi prime minister who has been sharply critical of Israel.
Arab governments, despite your arguments, who first criticized Hezbollah, have now changed their tune. Now they’re sharply critical of Israel.
And despite from both of you warnings to Syria and Iran to back off support from Hezbollah, effectively, Mr. President, your words are being ignored.
So what has happened to America’s clout in this region that you’ve committed yourself to transform?
Keep going for the answer:
BUSH: It’s an interesting period because, instead of having foreign policies based upon trying to create a sense of stability, we have a foreign policy that addresses the root causes of violence and instability.
For a while, American foreign policy was just, “Let’s hope everything is calm” — kind of, managed calm. But beneath the surface brewed a lot of resentment and anger that was manifested on September the 11th.
Whereas Bill Clinton invested his all in trying to broker a permanent agreement on the Israel/Palestinian question (managed calm with a goal), Bush has no interest in calm. For the neo-conservatives, calm is a dangerous illusion that allows anger to fester until it manifests itself in events like 9/11.
Micheal Ledeen explains: “The only way we are going to win this war is to bring down those regimes in Tehran and Damascus, and they are not going to fall as a result of fighting between their terrorist proxies in Gaza and Lebanon on the one hand, and Israel on the other. Only the United States can accomplish it.”
Bush continues:
And so we’ve taken a foreign policy that says: On the one hand, we will protect ourselves from further attack in the short run by being aggressive in chasing down the killers and bringing them to justice.
And make no mistake: They’re still out there, and they would like to harm our respective peoples because of what we stand for. In the long term, to defeat this ideology — and they’re bound by an ideology — you defeat it with a more hopeful ideology called freedom.
I think Vladimir Putin had the perfect rejoinder for this:
Bush: I talked about my desire to promote institutional change in parts of the world, like Iraq where there’s a free press and free religion, and I told him that a lot of people in our country would hope that Russia would do the same.
Putin: We certainly would not want to have the same kind of democracy that they have in Iraq, quite honestly.
We have to keep reminding people that our allies in the region (Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Kuwait, and the Emirates) are not free, they have no free press, their elections are limited shams. Elections in Palestine resulted in a victory for Hamas. Elections in Lebanon resulted in seats for Hezbollah. Elections in Iraq resulted in a pro-Iranian government. The more elections we have the less popular we are and the more influence Iran gains. Freedom doesn’t equal a population that elects American/Israeli puppets to represent them.
More Bush:
And, look, I fully understand some people don’t believe it’s possible for freedom and democracy to overcome this ideology of hatred. I understand that. I just happen to believe it is possible. And I believe it will happen.
And so what you’re seeing is, you know, a clash of governing styles. For example, you know, the notion of democracy beginning to emerge scares the ideologues, the totalitarians, those who want to impose their vision. It just frightens them.
And so they respond. They’ve always been violent.
Once again, it is not the ‘terrorists’ that are frightened by the election results in the Middle East, but anyone that is concerned about stability, America’s influence, the price of oil, the security of Israel, or peace in the region. Simply put, there is a reason that we pay for the governments and militaries of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan. They don’t bother Israel and they do business with us. The longer we continue backing Israel’s occupation of contested lands, the less we can afford democracy anywhere near the Middle East.
Bush again:
You know, I hear this amazing kind of editorial thought that says, all of a sudden, Hezbollah’s become violent because we’re promoting democracy. They have been violent for a long period of time. Or Hamas?
One reason why the Palestinians still suffer is because there are militants who refuse to accept a Palestinian state based upon democratic principles.
Another reason they suffer is because Bush has done virtually nothing to try to bring about a Palestinian state based on democratic principles. Bush certainly hasn’t respected the outcome of their latest election.
And so what the world is seeing is a desire by this country and our allies to defeat the ideology of hate with an ideology that has worked and that brings hope.
And one of the challenges, of course, is to convince people that Muslims would like to be free, that there’s other people other than people in Britain and America that would like to be free in the world.
There’s this kind of almost — kind of a weird kind of elitism that says well maybe — maybe certain people in certain parts of the world shouldn’t be free; maybe it’s best just to let them sit in these tyrannical societies.
And our foreign policy rejects that concept. And we don’t accept it.
Once again, Bush displays an astonishing ability to distort reality. Palestine has elections, Bush rejects the result. Lebanon has elections, Bush allows Israel to destroy their infrastructure. Meanwhile Bush does almost nothing about the tyrants in the region we count as our allies. And he has the gall to say he has a strategy of spreading freedom that is the reason America is hated and a target for reprisals.
He simply refuses to think about difficult issues like: will Saudi Arabia splinter like Iraq without a strongarm government? Or why, in Lebanon, eighty percent of Christians polled supported Hizbullah along with 80 percent of Druze and 89 percent of Sunnis?
And so we’re working. And this is — I said the other day, when these attacks took place, I said it should be a moment of clarity for people to see the stakes in the 21st century.
I mean, now there’s an unprovoked attack on a democracy. Why? I happen to believe because progress is being made toward democracies.
And I believe that — I also believe that Iran would like to exert additional influence in the region; a theocracy would like to spread its influence using surrogates.
And so I’m as determined as ever to continue fostering a foreign policy based upon liberty. And I think it’s going to work unless we lose our nerve and quit. And this government isn’t going to quit.
If they are not going to quit then they need to be removed from office. They are literally destroying the world.
