Poor Mr. Bush

Just when most of the world was lambasting our poor president with disdain and contempt, accusing him of everything from bumbling incompetence to sublime ignorance, the poor guy suffers yet another defeat in his democratization program for the Middle East. Iraq. The threat of civil war looms in a failed country, one that our beloved leaders not so long ago told us was full of people who would welcome American troops with open arms and bouquets of flowers, the way Europeans welcomed their liberators. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen. The Pandora’s Box that many predicted would result from America’s invasion of that country based on false intelligence – if one is to give the Bush administration the benefit of the doubt, which in itself is a stretch for many – seems to be opening.

In any case, it is happening and because it's happening it simply adds to the mess the world is in – from Al Qaeda terrorists operating at will in Iraq to abuses of prisoners at Guantanimo to torture at Abu Graib and seemingly dozens of other detention centers in Afghanistan and, apparently, in “new” Europe. Not to mention the poor people of Iraq.

Meanwhile, the jobless recovery of the American economy continues sluggishly and the dollar still hovers below the euro. The poverty gap widens in America and around the world and poor Mr. Bush has to admit that the government even got things wrong in the aftermath of Katrina. It’s not a very pleasant picture, this state of the union – and not one that Mr. Bush cared to talk about in “his” state of the union message.

Tilting at those Middle East windmills is not helping the situation very much, Sir. The enemy is still on the loose, wanted dead or alive. The clash of civilizations is drawing closer by the day. American credibility is sinking faster than the dollar.

Let's face it, Mr. President, the state of the union sucks!

No wonder many returning vets are looking to the Democrats to save them.

Now running for office: an army of Iraq war vets. All but one of these 50 or so House hopefuls are in the Democratic Party.

So here we are three years later and what has the Bush adventure in the Middle East contributed to the world – peace, stability, increased admiration for American intervention in the affairs of others, generosity in the face of disaster, words of wisdom to those who have lost the way or serious progress against those who wish America harm?

The true believer screams, “Just wait. Things are bound to improve.” The realist answers, “The world is a much more dangerous place than it was after 9/11.”

But the question remains, why? Can we simply put it down to ignorance of the world or incompetence? Most people recognize that Bush is probably the most unsuitable leader the Free World has ever had. He has failed at everything he has tried so far, including the presidency. Apart from his own fantasies about having a direct line to God, everything he touches turns to stone. The man is the archetypical loser and everyone knows it.

If anyone doubts it, just look at his latest proposal – to let entrepreneurs from the Middle East run American ports! He has to be kidding! Free trade, he calls it! How about freeing the people of the UAE, especially the women, while we’re at it? What does Bush have to say about that – and why, by the way, is he willing to defy even his own supporters to push this issue to its conclusion in spite of heavy opposition on both sides of the aisle?

Here’s some information that might shed some light on this issue. Could it be that there is something more important to Mr. Bush than the security of the United States, consistency of principle and a belief in freedom, democracy and justice (something that the UAE cannot lay claim to under any circumstances)?

How much does "free" trade have to do with this? How about a lot. The Bush administration is in the middle of a two-year push to ink a corporate-backed "free" trade accord with the UAE. At the end of 2004, in fact, it was Bush Trade Representative Robert Zoellick who proudly boasted of his trip to the UAE to begin negotiating the trade accord. Rejecting this port security deal might have set back that trade pact. Accepting the port security deal - regardless of the security consequences - likely greases the wheels for the pact. That's probably why instead of backing off the deal, President Bush - supposedly Mr. Tough on National Secuirty - took the extraordinary step of threatening to use the first veto of his entire presidency to protect the UAE's interests. Because he knows protecting those interetsts - regardless of the security implications for America - is integral to the "free" trade agenda all of his corporate supporters are demanding.

What a mess! It’s enough to make one feel sorry for him, to shed a tear of support for this much-maligned master of political intrigue. Clearly, he’s starting to feel the pain. Poor Mr. Bush.



Tags:
Bush, terrorism, UAE, U.S._Ports, Katrina, Middle_East

A Muslim President of Europe?

As a follow up to my previous post on the Danish cartoons, it now seems clear that extremists on both sides of the cultural fence are mainly responsible for the furor caused by the unfortunate choice to publish these deliberately insulting images of the Prophet Mohammed.

Here is a more definitive treatment of this issue by one of my favorite armchair analysts at Strategytalk.

Enjoy.



Tags:
Free_Speech, Danish Cartoons, Muslims, Prophet Mohammed, Jyllands_Posten, Mohammed_Cartoon

Two Faces of Extremism

The “cartoon wars” that are capturing headlines at the moment clearly reveal the two faces of extremism: one that rejects tolerance in the name of free speech and another that rejects free speech in the name of intolerance.

When the Danish newspaper, Jyllands Posten (a paper, incidentally, that also supported the regimes of Hitler and Mussolini in the 1930s) recently published satiric cartoons depicting the sacred figure of Islam, Mohammed, as an accessory to terrorism, holding him up to ridicule for the world to see, many Muslims around the world reacted violently, attacking Danish embassies, consulates and interests around the world. Other European and American media then picked up the story and published the images. The result: a minor clash of civilizations at ground zero.

Both acts represent the intellectual slag of the Enlightenment.

The period known as the Enlightenment triumphed in Europe after centuries of despotism, mysticism and religious intolerance. Starting with the reintroduction of Aristotelian ideas in 12th century Europe and the gradual triumph of the scientific method and the secular philosophy of humanism, Europe established a modus vivendi view of history that offered its inhabitants a viable alternative to constant wars and persecution of minorities. The Europe that emerged in the 18th century – spurred on by the democratic revolution in America – was the first step in the long march to today’s liberal societies, extolling the values of critical thinking, tolerance, respect for evidence and acceptance of natural sciences as the basis for improving social cohesion, physical health and economic well-being.

After 9/11, the actions of a fringe political activist group received global attention and, with the invasion of Iraq where their activities multiplied as a breeding ground for terrorists, achieved world notoriety. When George W. Bush won re-election in 2004, historian George Wills wrote a column in the New York Times entitled The Day the Enlightenment Went Out.

“The secular states of modern Europe do not understand the fundamentalism of the American electorate. It is not what they had experienced from this country in the past. In fact, we now resemble those nations less than we do our putative enemies.

“Where else do we find fundamentalist zeal, a rage at secularity, religious intolerance, fear of and hatred for modernity? Not in France or Britain or Germany or Italy or Spain. We find it in the Muslim world, in Al Qaeda, in Saddam Hussein's Sunni loyalists. Americans wonder that the rest of the world thinks us so dangerous, so single-minded, so impervious to international appeals. They fear jihad, no matter whose zeal is being expressed. “

Wills published his comments November 4, 2004. A little more than a year later, we are now seeing the spread of fundamentalist intolerance to the European community. Hiding behind the guise of free speech, some European newspapers have decided that an attack on one of the world’s leading religions is somehow an obligation, as well as a legal right. In doing so, it seems to me, they are assuming the intellectual weapons of those in the Muslim world who want to stamp out the Enlightenment, outlaw tolerance of opposing views, do away with secular science and destroy liberal democracy.

The issue of the right to be insulting is not the same one as the moral propriety of insulting someone’s deepest beliefs – particularly when the beliefs on the receiving end are shared by the terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda, whose avowed purpose is to destroy their secular enemies. Besides being totally offensive and gratuitous, such use of free speech will only serve to incite non-terrorist groups and individuals in the Muslim world, strengthening the hand of those whose professed aim is to tear down the wall that separates secular societies from theocracies.

Tags: Jyllands_Posten, Enlightenment, Extremism, Al Qaeda, Terrorism