[Peace-discuss] Remarkably, MSM crits SOTU

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Sadly, this article (for all its nonsense) is the most hopeful sign 
I've seen from Bush's speech Tuesday.  The Washington Post actually 
tries to do a little fact-checking on what he said.  This may be just 
another crack in the facade (like the Libby-Rove one that opened up in a 
DC courtroom this week -- which I'm claiming was predicted on News form 
Neptune): the Post has often been a CIA mouthpiece, and the Bush 
administration's attempt to blame what went wrong in Iraq on the CIA may 
be coming home to roost. Nevertheless, when there are cracks in the 
facade, a little light gets through, and the rest of us can see a bit. 
--CGE]

	President's Portrayal of 'The Enemy' Often Flawed
	By Glenn Kessler
	Washington Post Staff Writer
	Wednesday, January 24, 2007; A13

In his State of the Union address last night, President Bush presented 
an arguably misleading and often flawed description of "the enemy" that 
the United States faces overseas, lumping together disparate groups with 
opposing ideologies to suggest that they have a single-minded focus in 
attacking the United States.

Under Bush's rubric, a country such as Iran -- which enjoys diplomatic 
representation and billions of dollars in trade with major European 
countries -- is lumped together with al-Qaeda, the terrorist group 
responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. "The Shia and Sunni 
extremists are different faces of the same totalitarian threat," Bush 
said, referring to the different branches of the Muslim religion.

Similarly, Bush asserted that Shia Hezbollah, which has won seats in the 
Lebanese government, is a terrorist group "second only to al-Qaeda in 
the American lives it has taken." Bush is referring to attacks nearly a 
quarter-century ago on a U.S. embassy and a Marine barracks when the 
United States intervened in Lebanon's civil war by shelling Hezbollah 
strongholds. Hezbollah has evolved into primarily an anti-Israeli 
militant organization -- it fought a war with Israel last summer -- but 
the European Union does not list it as a terrorist organization.

At one point, Bush catalogued what he described as advances in the quest 
for freedom in the Middle East during 2005 -- such as the departure of 
Syrian troops from Lebanon and elections in Iraq. Then, Bush asserted, 
"a thinking enemy watched all of these scenes, adjusted their tactics 
and in 2006 they struck back." But his description of the actions of 
"the enemy" tried to tie together a series of diplomatic and military 
setbacks that had virtually no connection to one another, from an attack 
on a Sunni mosque in Iraq to the assassination of Maronite Lebanese 
political figure.

In his speech, Bush argued that "free people are not drawn to violent 
and malignant ideologies -- and most will choose a better way when they 
are given a chance." He also said that terrorist groups "want to 
overthrow moderate governments."

In the two of the most liberal and diverse societies in the Middle East 
-- Lebanon and the Palestinian territories -- events have undercut 
Bush's argument in the past year. Hezbollah has gained power and 
strength in Lebanon, partly at the ballot box. Meanwhile, Palestinians 
ousted the Fatah party -- which wants to pursue peace with Israel -- 
from the legislature in favor of Hamas, which is committed to Israel's 
destruction and is considered a terrorist organization by the State 
Department.

In fact, many of the countries that Bush considers "moderate" -- such as 
Egypt and Saudi Arabia -- are autocratic dictatorships rated among the 
worst of the "not free" nations by the nonpartisan Freedom House. Their 
Freedom House ratings are virtually indistinguishable from Cuba, Belarus 
and Burma, which Bush last night listed as nations in desperate need of 
freedom.

Bush also claimed that "we have a diplomatic strategy that is rallying 
the world to join in the fight against extremism." But Monday, a poll of 
26,000 people in 25 countries was released that showed that global 
opinion of U.S. foreign policy has sharply deteriorated in the past two 
years. Nearly three-quarters of those polled by GlobeScan, an 
international polling company, disapprove of U.S. policies toward Iraq, 
and nearly half said the United States is playing a mainly negative role 
in the world.

In his State of the Union address a year ago, Bush said that progress in 
Iraq meant "we should be able to further decrease our troop levels" but 
that "those decisions will be made by our military commanders, not by 
politicians in Washington, D.C." Bush now proposes to increase troop 
levels, after having overruled the concerns of commanders. In his speech 
last night, he sidestepped this contradiction, saying that "our military 
commanders and I have carefully weighed the options" and "in the end, I 
chose this course of action."

On domestic policy, Bush at one point said that "the recovery" has added 
more than 7.2 million jobs since August 2003. But the net number of jobs 
created since Bush became president in January 2001, is much lower -- 
just 3.6 million. The Bush administration's performance is fairly 
mediocre for the sixth year of a presidency, according to historical 
statistics maintained by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nearly 18 
million jobs were added by the sixth year of Bill Clinton's presidency 
-- and nearly 10 million were added at this point in Ronald Reagan's 
presidency.

Bush claimed credit for cutting the budget deficit ahead of schedule and 
proposed to eliminate it over the next five years. He did not mention 
that he inherited a huge budget surplus -- $236 billion in 2000 -- 
compared with a $296 billion deficit in the 2006 fiscal year, largely as 
a result of Bush's tax cuts and spending increases. Bush claimed that 
the No Child Left Behind Act has helped students to "perform better at 
reading and math, and minority students are closing the achievement 
gap." But states made stronger average annual gains in reading during 
the decade before the law took effect, education researchers have found, 
and half a dozen recent studies have shown little progress in narrowing 
the test-score gap between minority and white students.

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