Has President Bush Threatened The World?

By James Donahue

January 2005

“The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.”

With these words during his Jan. 20 inauguration President George W. Bush rattled the rafters of governments around the world.

While sounding lofty and fair to most Americans living within the framework of the U. S. styled democratic system, the threat of “shaping a balance of power” around the world that “favors freedom” was perceived as a threat by many world leaders, many of whom still rule with an iron fist.

His declaration that “ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder” constitute “a mortal threat” and that “the force of human freedom” is needed to break this threat (to the U.S.) set off alarm bells throughout Europe, the Middle East and China. It is the policy of his administration, Bush said, to support forces of democracy “with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.”

He also said: "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands."

The President warned that to have continued good relations with the United States, even our allies “will require the decent treatment of their own people.”

The world reaction to the speech was one of great concern.

Germany’s left-wing Die Tageszeitung referred to the concept as “empire-building.”

The French newspapers Le Figaro and Le Parisien said the speech was “messianic” when it came to bringing freedom to nations around the world.

The Italian publication La Repubblica said the affair was “the climax for a quiet man, sitting on a throne and watching a world that looks back at him with concern.”

Even the Los Angeles Times wrote: “There are reasons to be impressed by Bush’s new doctrine. There are also reasons to be very afraid.”

The editor of Kenya’s Nation noted that the speech focused on the power of freedom and proposed that the best hope for world peace was an expansion of freedom in all the world. “The differences are over what he understands by ‘freedom’ and how the benefits of democracy should be spread in the world, or indeed whether it is any country’s business to export democracy to others,” the paper said.

In China, the People’s Daily said: “No banquet under the sun will last forever. After the firework fades away Washington is still under a dark sky. The sole superpower sends a sense of inauspiciousness to the world when its president is inaugurated under wartime security standards: America, where (are) you heading?”

Writer David Walsh noted that during the 20-minute speech, Bush uttered the words “free” and “freedom” 34 times, and used the word “liberty” 12 times.

“The absurd repetition of freedom is unlikely to deceive anyone, certainly not victims and opponents of his first administration’s crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere,” Walsh said. “Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and the rest of this government stand waist deep in blood and filth, responsible for the killing of more than 100,000 Iraqis and the death and maiming of thousands of American soldiers.”

He warned that: “The US government and military have spelled out what sort of ‘freedom’ they have in mind for the Iraqi people and the rest of the world in Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib and Fallujah: repression, torture, military occupation, the destruction of entire cities. Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan also promised to ‘liberate’ the populations of Europe and Asia.”

Thus we have a world reaction to the inauguration address that is far from positive.

Even more troublesome were comments by Vice President Dick Cheney on the same day. During an interview with radio host Don Imus, Cheney listed Iran as among the top world trouble spots. Bush has refused to rule out an attack on that country.

“I will never take any option off the table,” he said.