THEY'RE ALWAYS A COUPLE STEPS BEHIND HIM:

Like the fall of the Berlin Wall, Iraq's elections will change world history: The momentum for change in the Middle East is now unstoppable Like the fall of the Berlin Wall, Iraq’s elections will change world history (Gerard Baker, 2/04/05, Times of London)

PRESIDENT BUSH’S State of the Union speech on Wednesday night got the usual thumbs down in the perfumed salons of the self-appointed intellectual liberal elites.

The Guardian insisted it amounted to a near-declaration of war on Iran and Syria. The BBC was dutifully sniffy about the very idea of promoting democratic change in the world. You sometimes wonder how the BBC and The Guardian might have reported the Sermon on the Mount: “Self-proclaimed Messiah endorses poverty for all. Says persecuted must grin and bear it.” Or Churchill’s oration on taking office: “Prime Minister promises to fight mighty Germans with nothing more than personal body fluids.” [...]

Mr Bush restated the ultimate aim of US strategy as ending tyranny on Earth. This time, perhaps anticipating a little better the carping criticism that this is crazy/dishonest/hypocritical, the President added some specifics that are likely to shape US policy for years ahead. In doing so he demonstrated that rhetoric has its own consequences. George W. Bush is slowly, steadily ratcheting up the rhetoric, not to threaten all-out war, as his screaming critics claim, but to create an international climate in which the price of supporting repression is intolerably high.

By calling explicitly on Saudi Arabia and Egypt to liberalise, he made it harder than ever for the US to return to an approach that connives at those regimes’ corruption and autocracy. By challenging Iran and Syria to stop their support for terrorism, and in Iran’s case, its pursuit of nuclear weapons, he emphasised again that the post-September 11 world is not a safe one for dictators and fanatics who thrive through mass murder.

But the entire speech, indeed the entire opening act of this President’s second term, was ventilated by the extraordinary air that has blown around the world from Iraq since Sunday’s elections.

Contrived it may have been, but there was no escaping the emotional symbolism of the moment when Janet Norwood, the mother of a Marine killed in the assault on Fallujah last year, embraced Safia Taleb al-Suhali, the daughter of an Iraqi murdered by Saddam Hussein who had just triumphantly voted in Iraq’s elections. It was an iconic moment. The symbolism was captured by two poignant visual effects — Mrs Norwood clasped her son’s dog tags; Ms al-Suhali waved the purple finger of magnificent defiance.

How many columns have run since the Inaugural saying that the President's rhetoric about liberty is empty because he'd never pressure autocratic "allies"?

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 3, 2005 6:12 PM