Administration Officials: What Bush said in his speech, while massively awesome, was not, like, meant to be taken literally.
As you know, Bush promised on Thursday to rid the world of tyranny once and for all and stand side by side with all human beings anywhere who are fighting for freedom. Ha ha ha, we all got a good laugh out of that one.
But it turns out some people, libruls and shit, thought we was serious! There are even people in other countries who think his rhetoric is a little hollow considering the policies the U.S. pursues in their regions.
Nor, they say, will it lead to any quick shift in strategy for dealing with countries such as Russia, China, Egypt and Pakistan, allies in the fight against terrorism whose records on human rights and democracy fall well short of the values Bush said would become the basis of relations with all countries.
Bush advisers said the speech was the rhetorical institutionalization of the Bush doctrine and reflected the president's deepest convictions about the purposes behind his foreign policies. But they said it was carefully written not to tie him to an inflexible or unrealistic application of his goal of ending tyranny.
"It has its own policy implications, but it is not to say we're not doing this already," said White House counselor Daniel J. Bartlett. "It is important to crystallize the debate to say this is what it is all about, to say what are our ideals, what are the values we cherish."
"It is not a discontinuity. It is not a right turn," said a senior administration official, who spoke with reporters from newspapers but demanded anonymity because he wanted the focus to remain on the president's words and not his. "I think it is a bit of an acceleration, a raising of the priority, making explicit in a very public way to give impetus to this effort." He added that it was a "message we have been sending" for some time.
What he means is that it's a message they've been saying for some time, which is, to them, the same thing as believing and actually acting on the message. They say it a lot, therefore it is true. Please ignore the waterboarding behind the curtain.
As for the ungrateful foreigners, they're not buying it either.
Although the president did not mention the daily violence in Iraq and in the Palestinian territories, the U.S. role in those conflicts frequently spurs Arabs to question American credibility regarding the goals Bush outlined in his address. Several writers called the speech "messianic" in tone and language and potentially harmful to fledgling reform movements across the region.
"It's scary stuff, so sweeping and overarching you don't know what to make of it," said Sadiq Azm, a Syrian writer and reform advocate. "He's saying that what's good for America is good for everyone else. We are used to this kind of bombast from our Arab leaders. But it's been a long time since I've heard it in English."
