Pundits weigh in on Bush's UN speech
Too much justification for US-led war in Iraq, not enough proposals for help, say critics.
Chances are that if you read a few online news reports about
Bush's speech at the UN Tuesday, you came across the word "stony-faced" at least once.
For press descriptions of world leaders' reactions to Bush's speech, "stony-faced" seemed to beat out "luke-warm" and "tepid" as the adjective
du jour.
Interestingly enough, it was also John Kerry's word of choice.
Hours after Bush's speech, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry accused Bush of failing to "level with the world's leaders" about the Iraq war during his speech. Kerry said that Bush stood at the General Assembly before a "stony-faced body and
barely talked about the realities at all of Iraq."
The Boston Globe reports that Bush still faces a "
skeptical crowd" at the UN. Like most other papers, the
Globe pointed out that the applause during the speech was sparse.
The headline of an editorial in
The Independent reads: "Mr. Bush had a chance to ask for help in Iraq, but he
chose to preach instead."
The Guardian called Bush's speech "
unrepentant" and asserted that it "appeared essentially tailored for a domestic audience rather than foreign consumption."
The Guardian quotes Swiss president, Joseph Deiss, as saying: "In hindsight, experience shows that actions taken without a mandate which has been clearly defined in a security council resolution are doomed to failure."
Geov Parrish, a Seattle-based columnist and reporter for Seattle Weekly, writes that "
Bush embarrassed America when he went before a stony-faced audience at the United Nations Tuesday and claimed that all was well in Iraq..."
Slate columnist Fred Kaplan criticizes Bush's speech for empty rhetoric.
It was a puzzling speech from start to finish. Near its beginning, when Bush said, "We know that dictators are quick to choose aggression, while free nations strive to resolve differences in peace," was there a delegate in the chamber who didn't wonder at the irony? It was Bush himself, after all, who was quick to choose war in Iraq – insiders' chronicles agree that he decided on that path in early 2002, over a year before the UN debates – while the vast majority of the body's members, free and unfree, were striving for a resolution short of conflict.
Slate's chief political correspondent William Saletan analyzes
Bush and Kerry's campaign rhetoric on Iraq in light of traditional political labels "liberal" and "conservative".
What's hard to imagine is that the candidate who prefers stability is the so-called liberal and the candidate who prefers democracy and "hope" is the so-called conservative. Count the candidates' buzzwords. The word "burden" appeared five times in Kerry's speech [Monday]. The words "idealism" and "ideals" appear six times in Bush's speech [Tuesday]. A
Wall Street Journal editorial picks up on this same theme.
As we've noted before, one of the striking trends in recent years has been the complete role reversal of our two major parties in their philosophy of foreign policy, with Republicans pushing idealism and Democrats deriding it as a "neocon" folly. This campaign is shaping up to be no exception.
The New York Times served up criticism of Bush's speech in a Wednesday editorial, lamenting what it seemed to perceive as another
missed opportunity to shore up more UN support for Iraq.
Even when he talked about issues of common agreement, like the global fight against AIDS and easing the crushing third-world debt, Mr. Bush seemed more interested in praising his own policies than in assuming the leadership of an international effort. The speech would have drawn cheers at an adoring Republican National Convention, but it seemed to fall flat in a room full of stony-faced world leaders. ...
Mr. Bush might have done better at wooing broader international support if he had spent less time on self-justification and scolding and more on praising the importance of international cooperation and a strengthened United Nations. Instead, his tone-deaf speechwriters achieved a perverse kind of alchemy, transforming a golden opportunity into a lead balloon.
But not all analysis of Bush's was negative.
The Washington Times called Bush's speech "a compelling, unapologetic case for his approach to the war against Islamist terror and its state sponsors, and his belief that the furtherance of democracy was essential to winning the war."
Much as he had done in his speech to the General Assembly one year ago this week, the president carefully delineated the critical differences between democratic nations and those where Islamist radicalism and more secular forms of tyranny hold sway. ...
Mr. Bush forcefully rebutted the false assertion that nations could stay out of war by standing on the sidelines and hoping that terrorists would decide to target others instead.
Conservative columnist and former White House speechwriter David Frum, widely credited with coining the "
axis of evil" phrase in reference to Iran, Iraq, and North Korea, writes in
The National Review Online that it was a "lovely speech by the president to the UN." But he asks, "
What happened to the Iran paragraph?"
Mr. Frum points out that Iran has recently defied the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and announced that it will continue to move to enrich uranium.
As usual, many countries – including unfortunately some of the European allies – are disposed to shrug the threat off and hope for the best. Some of those allies, even the UN Secretary General, have complained that the US did not give enough heed to UN procedures on Iraq. OK then: Let's see how they follow UN procedures on Iran. The UN speech presented an opportunity to remind those allies of their danger – and their obligations. Why didn't the president make use of it?
Also...
•
The longest day (
The Independent)
•
If America were Iraq, what would it be like? (
Informed Comment)
•
Brazil, Germany, India, Japan appeal for UN seats (
The Sydney Morning Herald)
•
A German-Spanish-French Axis (
Al-Hayat)
•
Nothing to do with the truth (
The Weekly Standard)
•
Cat Stevens sparks US plane alert (
BBC)
•
2 Iraq views, 2 campaigns (
The New York Times)
• Feedback appreciated. E-mail
Matthew Clark.
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