THE PREZ AND THEM

Patrick Belton has some world reactions to Bush's NED speech, here. Below, you'll find some more.

German-language reaction to the President's speech at NED last week has been fairly critical, although the Swiss are willing to express support for Bush, as usual.

The Neue Zuercher Zeitung has a positive article titled "Bush supports democratization of the Orient," here. NZZ argues that Bush's omission of direct criticism of Uzbekistan ("one of the most repellant dictatorships in the world") leaves him open to the familiar charge of hypocrisy when strategic interests clash with his avowed preference for democracy. Nonetheless, NZZ sees the speech as an expression of a change of view in Washington, namely, "that support for friendly regimes -- in Cairo or Riyadh, for example -- will not buy long-term stability." The NZZ piece is a news item and not a commentary, but the coverage is positive.

The Frankfurter Rundschau's coverage is more critical of Bush. In an editorial titled "George Ronald Bush," Rolf Paasch writes off the speech as a "domestic political attempt to place the current difficulties in Iraq in a more optimistic context." Paasch counsels his German readers not to expect that Bush's "electoral strategy" -- "put on the broad cloak of his pre-predecessor and work for an improvement of the situation in Iraq" -- will fail; apparently, Paasch thinks that the German press has been underestimating Bush's re-election chances by portraying him as inept and bumbling. The Rundschau also has a piece filed from Cairo the headling of which implies that the press in the Middle East has reacted with "skepticism" to Bush's speech ("Arabs hear 'Blabber'" [ less harsh in German, where the word I've translated as "blabber" is etymologically related to the word for "speech"). Nonetheless, the piece also contains a quote from Gehad Auda, an Egyptian academic, who says that "there is a great need for more extensive democratic reforms in the entire near east." The Rundschau's report of the speech itself decries the lack of concrete proposals for working toward Bush's stated goals.

Financial Times Deutschland is schizophrenic in its approach. Its article is titled "Bush's beautiful empty words," but the emphasis is probably on the word "beautiful." Here is the concluding paragraph:

"In Iraq the Americans are at a dead end, politically and militarily. An exchange of troops in the next year will only be accomplished with much work. When Bush reminds us of the Berlin air lift of 1948, that's a really important signal. Nothing would be worse than an excessively hasty retreat from Baghdad. A central building block of the U.S. strategy seems to be the principle of hope, however. If Bush doesn't put more effort into his grand project, his idealism isn't only naive -- it's very dangerous."

In Irak stecken die Amerikaner militärisch und politisch in einer Sackgasse. Nur mit Müh und Not kann der
Austausch der Truppen im nächsten Jahr bewerkstelligt werden. Wenn Bush nun an die Berliner Luftbrücke von 1948 erinnert, ist das zwar ein wichtiges Signal. Nichts wäre schlimmer als ein überhasteter Abzug aus Bagdad. Ein zentraler Baustein der US-Strategie scheint jedoch weiter das Prinzip Hoffnung zu sein. Wenn Bush sich nicht stärker für sein großes Projekt engagiert, dann ist sein Idealismus nicht bloß naiv - sondern höchst gefährlich.

An interesting tidbit: the french-language Al Bayane (Morocoo) notes that Bush mentioned democratic progress in Morocco specifically, and discusses the follow-up comments of the U.S. ambassador there.

Jack (who happens to work at NED) asked me what I think of the President's speech. I'm a little unsure about the historical parallels that Bush draws with the cold war. One main problem is that our alliances with various undemocratic regimes in the region were a part of our cold war strategy, and since the cold war is presumed to have been a victory, it's a little hard to say that alliances with undemocratic regimes didn't purchase long-term security in the terms within which that security was viewed during the cold war. And for all of the honoring of Ronald Reagan, he was not particularly concerned with criticizing repressive regimes as long as they were anti-communist; viewing Reagan as a hero in the long-term struggle for "freedom" is a continuation of the cold war lens that we're supposed to reject when we allow ourselves to criticize "sixty years" of accomodating dictatorial regimes. Aside from the case of Uzbekistan, the U.S. has continued the cooperation in some pretty unsavory circumstances. For all of the recent criticism of Syria, the U.S. was more than willing to deport individuals there after 9/11 with the knowledge that security forces there would engage in torture and -- did the U.S. perhaps hope this? -- perhaps extract information that could lead to the prevention of terrorist attacks. This is the case with Maher Arar, the Canadian-Syrian dual citizen whose recent account of his torture over the past year in a Syrian jail has shocked the Canadian press and also managed to trickle into our own media landscape.

I'm all for pressure on states to become more democratic. I really hope that the effort in Iraq succeeds, even though I was unsure about the case for war. Like Josh Chafetz, I think that the jury is still out with respect to the success or failure of American policy in the Middle East. By the way, if you missed the Fresh Air interview with Nouman H. Shubbar, a Philadelphia police officer originally from Iraq who helped train Iraqi policemen recently, listen to it now. Frankly, the interview gives the lie to that boring, ignorant, and politically motivated line about NPR having a liberal bias: it is an encouraging story of someone from the states attempting to help out Iraqis -- and of Iraqis being willing to take the help and thankful for the release from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein. For more on Shubbar, see this Philadelphia Inquirer article.

So, even though my instinct is to be critical of Bush and his policies, I still think that there is reason to be hopeful that the administration will live up to its stated promises here. In all honesty, if a Democrat were in the White House, I'm pretty sure that I would be making the same arguments with a little more enthusiasm. And if we had invaded the Congo to prevent civil war there and help establish democracy, I would be an unequivocal supporter of the invasion, so even though the administration has not been up front on every aspect of the Iraq war (and has bungled many aspects of it), I still hope that we don't pull out too soon.

On the question of the broad strategy of promoting democracy in the Middle East, though: the devil is in the details. I'm willing to wait and see what those details are. If they involve ticking off Turkey by placing a higher priority on graduation ceremonies than historic NATO meetings, or cooperating with Syria in the torture of terror suspects, then I'm not entirely sure about the broader commitments. I'm willing to wait and see, but I'll still vote against Bush next year, regardless of what he does on this front.