Bush's "Major Speech"
By James Zogby
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Tuesday 11 October 2005
President George W. Bush's October 6, 2005, address before the National Endowment
for Democracy (NED) was billed by the White House as a major speech. And it
was.
Though the speech was a deeply flawed and profoundly disturbing effort, it
represented the President's most developed attempt to cast the Iraq war as a
part of the global war on terror. It was a neo-conservative manifesto - an ideological
vision of a global conflict between freedom and tyranny, good and evil.
Seeds of this line of thinking have been present from the beginning of the
conflict, growing, it appears, as the war worsens and public opinion sours.
Despite the President's assertion that progress in Iraq is undeniable and irreversible,
there is much evidence to the contrary. The Administration's troubles are compounded
by the fact that the public's support for the war continues to decline, as does
the President's own favorable ratings (now down to 37% in one poll). The stage
was thus set for a "major speech."
In the President's expanded vision, the war on terror is the same as World
War II and the Cold War - a theme Bush first tried out in his pre-Katrina speech
to a largely military audience in San Diego. At the same time, al-Qaeda has
been morphed into Nazism and communism and bin Laden into a threat on a par
with Hitler and Stalin.
These parallels are a stretch, to be sure. Firstly, because they are so exaggerated
and ahistorical. While al-Qaeda and bin Laden's threats and evil intentions
are clear, even when they had a base in Afghanistan, they lacked the power and
potential of those with whom they are now compared. Elevating them to that level
presents dangers, as well. (It is ironic that at the same time the President
was presenting this transformation of al-Qaeda into an empire-in-the-making,
he also presented a contradictory but more realistic and nuanced view of the
terrorist group, describing them as "local cells ... not centrally directed
... more like a loose network with many branches than an army under a single
command.")
One of the problems that haunted the US during the Cold War was the tendency
to see all regional conflicts through the prism of the US-Soviet rivalry. As
a result, conflicts were either locked in place or exaggerated. Much the same
thing may be happening again in Chechnya and Palestine, to cite two cases. By
lumping all of these conflicts into one global struggle, we lose sight of their
individual origins and potential solutions.
Finally, by dismissing the role that Iraq has played in fueling both extremism
and global terror, the speech provides no way out but unending conflict.
What is required, at this point, is a clear-headed examination of what went
wrong in Iraq - not an ideological effort to paint us deeper into a corner there.
Instead of seeing that the war, entered into for the wrong reasons, poorly planned
and badly executed, has had unintentional consequences, the President has sought
to remake the war's intent and expand its imperative. Instead of accepting responsibility,
he casts blame on others. Instead of understanding the aggravation presented
by our role there, the speech reduced it to a benign "presence" and
equates it to other benign "presences" - Russia in Chechnya and Israel
in the Palestinian territories.
This "major speech" was not well received here. One newspaper editorialized
that it had little to offer "besides usual rhetorical flourishes ... and
muddle and confusion." Another accused it of "misreading the progress
of the war." One commentator, unfairly I believe, said that the only contribution
the speech made was to "turn up the volume on a broken record."
The headlines the speech received all focused on the President's claim that
the administration had foiled ten terrorist attacks since 9/11. In response,
one newspaper wrote that "senior law enforcement officials questioned whether
any of the incidents ... ever constituted an imminent threat to public safety
and said authorities have not disrupted any operative plots within the US since
the Sept. 11 attacks."
It was a major speech, but a flawed one. Instead of a clear-headed examination
of reality, it was an ideologically based exaggeration. It provided no solution
other than to continue on the current path until "victory" - although
victory is never defined. As such, it leaves us waiting for more speeches, still
to come.
Dr. James Zogby is the President of the Arab American Institute. His column will appear weekly in t r u t h o u t.
-------
Jump to today's TO Features:
Print This Story
E-mail This Story