Bush’s assault on Democracy
February 21st, 2008
By Gerardo Orlando
With President George W. Bush, we had a president who made sweeping promises about the importance of fostering democracy around the world, to the point that many of his speeches reminded listeners to the utopian goals of Woodrow Wilson. Unfortunately, Bush and his advisors had no clue about the challenges facing those trying to bring democracy to places like the Middle East. Just as in Iraq, lofty goals were not backed up with preparation or hard work. Instead we had utter incompetence.
Joe Klein reports the following from the U.S,-Islamic World Forum in Doha:
The distress was deeper than exhaustion. Many of the Muslim delegates seemed stunned, finally, by the rush of history unleashed by the Bush Administration. “Everything the United States has favored is now radioactive, especially democracy,” said Rami Khouri, a Lebanese journalist. The Administration had pushed for elections in places like the Palestinian territories where the essential components of democracy—a free press, a free economy, the rule of law—did not exist. Religious parties had won, or gained momentum, in most of these elections, and the U.S. had backtracked, refusing to accept the Hamas victory in the Palestinian territories, re-embracing autocrats like Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. “Our indigenous democratic reformers,” Khouri said, “are in retreat across the region.”
This isn’t about conservative or liberal foreign policy. It’s about common sense. Conservatives like George Will and Pat Buchanan saw the folly of Bush’s policies, as did liberals like Ted Kennedy. The greatest tragedy is that real efforts to bring democracy to the world have been set back by this administrations incompetence.
February 21st, 2008 14:42
That Bush has nearly destroyed America is self evident. i would much rather analyze in agonising detail the McCain lovemaking lobbyist scandal. Americans need to know how many times he made love outside the bonds of his marriage and we need to know if in exchange for this lovemaking, he did not did not influence our nations laws. McCain is a passionate man, and it\’s his same GOP that taught America the import of exposing a man\’s private sexual affairs to the public. Now is the time for us to expose all details of the McCain lovemaking scandal.
February 21st, 2008 14:54
How proud we are, as Americans, of our history and our triumph over the British during the Revolutionary War when the “unorthodox” fighting tactics of American rebels were able to defeat the British Army. That is cultural relativism.
As the Turner Thesis best explains, we became Americans by conquering the land. Just as those of the Middle East are the product of their environment, so are their culture, religion, and politics.
Democracy was not imposed on our nation, it grew organically out of an understanding of egalitarianism and of the philosophies of men who were able to tie economic growth, spritual freedom, and the civic responsibilty of liberty into a political system that functions to serve and protect the people.
How can the American “brain trust” not have a grasp of history and the lessons that it has taught us time and again?
The Bush administration is an embarrassment and shows it self to be either too ignorant or too arrogant. Either way, we lose.