Bush Asks Lands in Mideast to Try Democratic Ways

Bush Asks Lands in Mideast to Try Democratic Ways

Call me cynical, but who wrote this for Bush? He is not eloquent enough to come up with this on his own. But it is a good one...

"Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe, because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty."

Comments

[Cash Foley]

As a follow up:

As ‘simple’ as President Bush seems to be, he seems to ‘get it’ on this issue. He has continued to go back to the principle. Recently, he reiterated it in

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/14/AR2005051400091.html

"The agreement at Yalta followed in the unjust tradition of Munich and the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact," he added, referring to two treaties that cleared the way for World War II. "Once again, when powerful governments negotiated, the freedom of small nations was somehow expendable."

There has been a lot of commentary on his statements that have been negative (including this piece). As with many of the negative comments, they seem to focus on the ‘fairness of hindsight criticism’. I don’t care about that. It was a critical decision that set the tone of US leadership in post WWII. Defending freedom and individual rights was not the criteria for foreign policy. How many times and in how many places did this disturbing compromise made us allies with ruthless gangsters? The main question was always, how willing were they to be enemies to our enemies?

Of course, if President Bush wants to be consistent, he’ll have to face up to our partnership with Saudi Arabia.

[Martin Murray]

Well, that is a question, isn't it? I would normally give the President of The United States the benefit of the doubt by assuming that he really could see the truth of such a statement. But, given Bush's record of compromising liberty at home, I don't think he really gets this one either.

[Cash Foley]

I don't wonder so much if he wrote it, I wonder how much he believes it? And even so, how much does he understand it? Not to be picking on President Bush because he is basically 'simple', I doubt there have been more than a handful of American Presidents who would have 'really understood’ that statement - even if they said they believed it.