Bush Conveys U.S. Emotions to the World

President George W. Bush’s rousing speech to Congress won high praise abroad for articulating the sentiments of his aggrieved nation and for issuing an ultimatum to Afghanistan to surrender those believed responsible for the terror attacks on New York and the Pentagon.

Like British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who sat next to First Lady Laura Bush during the speech, many governments renewed vows of support Friday for the U.S. drive for justice.

In Moscow, Russian President Vladimir V. Putin seemed moved to action, responding with the strongest signal yet that his country would not sit on the sidelines of a “war on terrorism.”

Allies applauded--and echoed--Bush’s assertion that the war is not between the West and Islam, but there also was much criticism of his “arrogance” in admonishing the world that “either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”

Several political observers said the us-or-them policy is unrealistic and unsustainable.

“He wanted to divide the world into black or white, but there are a lot of gray people in the middle who don’t want a military solution,” said Ryuhei Hatsuse, professor of international relations at Kobe University in Japan.

“When [the United States] says that the fight is between good and evil, they go way too far,” said Vladimir P. Lukin, vice speaker of Russia’s lower house of parliament and a former ambassador to the United States. “Such rhetoric suggests they have usurped the power of the Almighty on Earth.”

What might inspire the troops ahead of a military campaign “is not going to be borne out over time,” said British political commentator Hugo Young of the Guardian newspaper. What happens, he asked, when a friendly country such as Egypt gets cold feet about a prolonged U.S.-led military campaign with Muslim civilian casualties? “Are they really going to be deemed an enemy of America?”

Many commentators lauded Bush’s most effective performance to date. He did not have to rally U.S. opinion, which was already united in grief and anger, but he had to express it, and that he did extremely well, they said. Several political analysts compared his firmness of purpose to that of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his “day of infamy” speech after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

“This was a speech of a world leader,” said Polish political analyst Jerzy Marek Nowakowski. “The president of the United States clearly stated that America is ready to take upon itself the responsibility of leadership of the free world.”

Bush “came storming out of his shell like a commander leading his troops onto the equivalent of D-day’s Omaha Beach,” London’s Evening Standard newspaper reported on its front page Friday.

But here, too, accolades came with a warning.

“We shall discover in days ahead whether American-led military action takes the limited form favored by Britain and other allies, or proves more ambitious and destructive, as administration hawks would like,” the paper said in an editorial. “If airstrikes and special forces raids are confined to carefully-chosen terrorist targets, Britain will remain firmly in step with the U.S. Concord with Washington would look more fragile if military action resulted in large-scale civilian casualties, in Afghanistan or anywhere else.”

In his speech, Bush asked for the help of the world’s police forces, intelligence services and banking systems to track down chief suspect Osama bin Laden and break his Al Qaeda organization. But the president left room for different countries to contribute to the campaign according to their political abilities--with differing levels of military, intelligence and moral support.

Japan’s Constitution, for example, bans all but defensive military actions. Mexicans have expressed sympathy for the victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks but remain committed to their country’s traditional neutrality in any armed conflict. In a poll published in Milenio newspaper Friday, 77% of respondents said Mexico should stay on the sidelines in any war.

“Mexico has always closed ranks with the United States and is willing to cooperate, but only in a diplomatic and political sense,” said Ana Covarrubias Velasco, an international relations researcher at El Colegio de Mexico in Mexico City.

Across the globe, there were few official responses to Bush’s appeal, which came overnight for Europe and the Middle East and at the start of the weekend for the Muslim world.

Putin was the most forthcoming.

“We are ready to cooperate with the U.S. in fighting terrorism in the widest possible sense,” Putin said in an interview with the German ARD network Friday night. “We have not received any specific requests as of yet, but the special services have been cooperating for a long time already. The question is how to bring this cooperation to a qualitatively new level. We are ready to do that.”

Russian backing is critical if the U.S. military campaign is to win support from Afghanistan’s northern neighbors in the Central Asian states of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. Russia also maintains strong ties with Iran, which borders western Afghanistan.

Iranian President Mohammad Khatami has condemned last week’s attacks, but Tehran’s support for retaliation is uncertain.

At Friday prayer, one of the nation’s most prominent, conservative clergymen talked of the need to combat terrorism but cautioned against a hasty response by the United States.

“Terrorism is intrinsically condemned, and all the world has condemned the recent attacks. But one should not act hastily to fight terrorism,” said Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi. “The international fight against terrorism should be well thought out, reasoned and directed at identifying and eradicating terrorism.”

At an emergency meeting in Brussels, European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana backed Bush’s appeal to moderate Muslims.

“President Bush said very clearly that this is not a crusade or a battle against civilization, against Islam or the Arab countries. On the contrary, we would like very much to have those countries together with us on this battle, this combat against terrorism,” Solana said.

Although abandoning his earlier “crusade” language won Bush some praise, many Muslims and Arabs remained unconvinced.

“The Muslim people are united,” hard-line cleric Mussa abu Sweilem roared through a loudspeaker in downtown Amman, the capital of Jordan, a U.S. ally in the Mideast. “They must stand by each other and support each other at all times.”

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon reiterated that his country was standing by the American people, while Hafez Barghouti, editor of the official newspaper of the Palestinian Authority, Al Hayat al Jadida, said many Palestinians fear that the Bush administration will try to lump them with Bin Laden.

“Until now, the Americans are [only] speaking about the terrorists who attacked them. They haven’t mentioned the Israeli occupation or the state terrorism that Israel uses against us,” Barghouti said.

Abdel Bari Atwan, editor of the London-based pan-Arab daily Al Quds al Arabi, criticized Bush’s obliteration of any middle ground in the war on terror.

“It was an arrogant speech. Americans are always telling us things are not black and white, that there are always grays. When we learn this from them, they say, no, you are either in or out, with us or against us. I am not allowed to use ‘buts,’ ” Atwan said.

An appeal for justice and peace came from one African victim of terrorism. Douglas Sidialo is a former marketing manager who was blinded during the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, that was also attributed to Bin Laden’s organization.

“It was a moving, powerful and important speech,” Sidialo wrote in an e-mail to The Times. “I was impressed by his advice to the American people to show calm. . . . It is my hope that he would equally exercise wisdom, caution, patience, restraint, and not retaliate.”

Sidialo, who helped form an organization to aid Kenyan survivors of the bombing, appealed to Islamic leaders to surrender the accused and “save us from this looming war.”

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Times staff writers Mary Curtius in Jerusalem, Chris Kraul in Mexico City, Mark Magnier in Tokyo, Maura Reynolds in Moscow, Sebastian Rotella in Paris, Ann M. Simmons in Johannesburg, Michael Slackman in Amman and special correspondents Ela Kasprzycka in Warsaw and Christian Retzlaff in Berlin contributed to this report.