Great article! Excerpts:
President George W. Bush's inauguration speech Thursday left most people in the Middle East unimpressed and unmoved, and more concerned than ever about U.S. foreign policy directions. The prevalent reaction in this region was that
he has merely raised the level of American double standards in the world to a new level of incredulity, given the massive gap between America's rhetorical commitment to democracy and freedom and the reality of its often whimsical foreign policy priorities. Five specific problems in Bush's speech stand out starkly in the eyes of observers in the Middle East.
Once again, he reflected
the neoconservative tendency to allow peculiarly American emotionalism and triumphalism to prevail over the more sober dictates of global realism. Linked to this is the fact that
most people in the Middle East—and probably the rest of the globe—reject the idea that the United States is either divinely mandated or formally certified by any global authority to promote freedom or any other value around the world. The world sees Americans' own sense of the universal power of their fine national ideals as both
presumptuous bombast and unacceptably predatory aggression.Instead of flamboyantly—
almost childishly—summoning divine inspiration for an American global 'calling', as Bush did in his speech, the United States would do better to craft practical foreign policies that are consistent, undiscriminating and based on working with like-minded partners around the world.
Bush will hear a great deal of skepticism from around the Middle East—and other parts of the world—in the next few days. The gap between the rhetoric and the policy is simply too wide, and has been for many, many years.http://www.tompaine.com/articles/bushs_widening_credibility_gap.php