A Skeptical World Reacts to Bush Speech

U.S. audiences seemed receptive to President Bush’s State of the Union address last Tuesday. But in much of the rest of the world, his words were viewed as highly provocative. Below are excerpts from commentary that appeared in the foreign press. (Compiled by Gale Holland)

ENGLAND

In George Bush’s America, there’s evidently little room for a sense of noblesse oblige ....Though the campaign against Al Qaeda has been brilliantly destructive of appalling evil forces, it has far to go. Bush’s own account of the nightmares he’s trying to pre-empt makes that very clear. How can he hope to do it solely through the might of American power and intelligence?

--By Hugo Young in The Guardian

President Bush’s State of the Union address, the most powerful speech he has delivered to America, should rightly be seen as an essay in fundamentalism. It laid out the principles which he hopes will eventually transform American culture and protect its society.... But in Bush’s mistaken choice of Iran as a target, his silence about Israel and his missionary call to propagate American values, he risks leaving the United States standing very much alone on the world stage ....

For a start, the idea of an “axis of evil” between three countries which are barely speaking is nonsense.... While Bush made a vague reference in his speech to working closely “with our coalition,” he is entirely wrong if he thinks there is a coalition for attacking Iran.

Nor, probably, is there for action against North Korea, or even Iraq. His speech was striking for its lack of mention of the United Nations, or of [British Prime Minister] Tony Blair. That supports other signs of a marked cooling off in the transatlantic relationship since November. America’s allies will also be perturbed by the lack of any mention of Israel. The message is that America will go it alone if it must.

--By Bronwen Maddor for the Times of London

IRAN

The fact is that although the U.S. forces have been trying for the past few months to capture Saudi-born dissident Osama bin Laden, who is considered by Washington to be the mastermind behind the Sept. 11 incidents, they have so far failed to achieve this objective. Thus, to hide this failure, Bush needs to raise a commotion over what he claims are threats from independent countries like Iran or North Korea in order to divert U.S. public attention from the Bin Laden issue ....The new Republican administration has not taken any effective steps toward solving certain domestic problems facing the American people, like the deepening economic recession. Rather, it has been allocating a great portion of public funds for military purposes. Now, to counter rising public objections and justify its militaristic policies, the U.S. president has to draw the attention of the American public to some imaginary foreign threats ....Bush is unlikely to succeed in covering up his failures on both the domestic and international fronts by resorting to such cheap and demagogic tactics.

--Unsigned editorial in The Tehran Times

CANADA

The most worrisome thing about a U.S. foreign policy steered by the perception that the world is divided between allies who support the war on terrorism (Russia, Pakistan and Israel, for instance) and those who don’t is where it leads. Through the Bush lens, the bad guys have to be told to shape up or look out. But what if there are more bad guys than realized, and what if they don’t shape up? Should they all be bombed into submission, as part of some global campaign that lasts indefinitely? Or will a diplomatic approach somehow have to be revived?

It will not be Bush but his successors who will likely have to answer that.

--Unsigned editorial in The Globe and Mail

TURKEY

The U.S. is pursuing a policy completely at odds with Turkey’s strategic interests regarding intervention in Iran and Northern Iraq

--By Erol Manisali in Cumhuriyet

JORDAN

One of the reasons Bush’s hawks are determined to strike soon is that Iraq is rapidly emerging from the political isolation imposed on the country by the U.S. since the 1991 Gulf War. The visits of Deputy Premier Tarik Aziz to Moscow and Beijing at the end of January consecrated Iraq’s reinstatement as a member of the community of nations and should make it all the more difficult for the Bush administration to resume assaults on Baghdad.

--By Michael Jansen in the Jordan Times

ISRAEL

Some of those who for years dismissed the possibility of America taking effective action against rogue regimes will oppose the extended Bush Doctrine as dangerous, imperialist, impossible, or all of the above. But it is not Bush who is being over-ambitious.... On the contrary; it is our pre-Sept. 11 world that was characterized by reckless complacency as the threats to the West grew and grew. Bush is being bold, bolder than the world ... expected, but not bolder than necessary.

--Unsigned editorial in the Jerusalem Post

SAUDI ARABIA

What Bush [said] on Tuesday night was that he was going to make America safe from further attacks.... regardless of the cost. And he was still going to cut [Americans’] taxes. So much good news must have made Americans sleep better in their beds Tuesday night. But what about the rest of the world?

The Palestinians who listened to the address must be still wondering what the president meant when he said, “America will lead by defending liberty and justice because they are right and true and unchanging for all people everywhere; no nation owns these aspirations, and no nation is exempt from them.”

They will have enough time to work out the relevance of these words to them while facing Israeli tanks, bulldozers, closures and American harangues about “Arafat not doing enough.”

--Unsigned editorial in Arab News

PAKISTAN

A greater anomaly in Bush’s speech is his unwillingness to differentiate between terrorists and freedom fighters.... While terrorists are evil men whose targets are innocent people, freedom fighters resist those robbing them of freedom. Theirs is a noble struggle which is invariably crowned with success. In the case of Palestine and Kashmir, the boot is on the other foot, for it is Israel and India which have been guilty of state terrorism. Regrettably, the Bush speech contains no censure of these two violators of human rights. Instead, it targets Iran, Iraq and North Korea, none of which is in possession of someone else’s territory.

--Unsigned editorial in Dawn

IRELAND

A U.S. attack on [Iran, Iraq or North Korea] would gravely affect the international coalition to fight terrorism. Without clear evidence, an express mandate from the United Nations and the concurrence of its allies, any attack would be a foolhardy and dangerous exercise in unilateralism. Bush should not assume the successful military operation in Afghanistan legitimizes such an escalation.

--Unsigned editorial in Irish Times

AUSTRALIA

The conservative political commentator Robert Novak, writing in the Washington Post, observed that [Bush’s] dramatic turn “effectively removed the Enron scandal from the headlines.” It also sent Mr. Bush’s administration scrambling. It has emerged that it had no broader policy in place to support the new rhetoric.

--By Peter Hartcher in the Australian Financial Review

NORTH KOREA

U.S.-resident Korean journalist Kim Min Ung charged that Washington’s hostile policy toward North Korea stems from its ambition to gain global supremacy by force. Commenting on the Bush administration’s declaration of this year as a year of war, he stated that U.S. strategy is essentially geared to supporting its superpower hegemony by military strength. Referring to the U.S. policy toward North Korea as hostile and aimed at stifling the latter, he said: “The U.S. pressurizes North Korea to give in to its policy of hegemony, and this is the way it wants the latter to change. That kind of change is not in the least bit desirable in the eyes of our nation as a whole.”

--Unsigned story in Pyongyang Times

INDONESIA

Overall, it was indeed a strong speech, but in our judgment it was also an incomplete one. The rest of the world, especially the developing non-Western countries, have a great interest in seeing that America should be successful in achieving a respectable level of economic growth towards the end of this year. Only a strong America can help the poorer parts of the world achieve a decent level of living.... We do expect a strong and structured commitment from Washington in overcoming the five major problems of the developing countries. Namely, availability of potable water; production and distribution of electricity affordable to all; construction of affordable housing; the eradication of major public diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria and AIDS; and widespread public education with an emphasis on mastering the basics of digital technology. To a large degree, the improvement of the social-economic level of poor people throughout the world is also an effective way of eliminating terrorism.

--Unsigned editorial in the Jakarta Post

INDIA

President Bush’s State of the Union message is a declaration of war on terrorism and he has backed it up with the largest increase in defense spending in two decades. Against whom is this war? The speech indicates explicitly who the enemy is and then obfuscates it with a lot of strategic deception rhetoric.... Bush speaks of a non-existent axis of Iraq, Iran and North Korea when he is referring to another state which has armed itself with North Korean missiles and has programs of weapons of mass destruction.

When President Bush talks of thousands of terrorists now outside Afghanistan, he can only mean Pakistan.... There is only one war against terrorism. The Bush speech makes it clear that Pakistan cannot pretend to be with the international alliance against terrorism and permit thousands of Al Qaeda and Taliban cadres to slip into Pakistan ....Unfortunately, Pakistan has deluded itself that it can succeed with its duplicity, as it has over the past 50 years. Now Gen. [Pervez] Musharraf and his corps commanders face a stark choice.

--By K. Subrahmanyam in the Times of India