[Peace-discuss] Remarkably, MSM crits SOTU
C. G. Estabrook
galliher at uiuc.edu
Wed Jan 24 21:39:12 CST 2007
[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 from
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.
###
More information about the Peace-discuss
mailing list