I’m not quite clear on whether the [tag]Bush[/tag] gang asked the [tag]United Nations[/tag] for the speaking opportunity today or whether the president spoke at the institution’s request, but I suspect today’s “major” Bush speech was the White House’s idea. The odd part is trying to understand why the president even bothered — the remarks weren’t anything the world hasn’t already heard before.
President Bush tried to quell anti-Americanism in the Middle East on Tuesday by assuring Muslims that he is not waging war against Islam, regardless of what “propaganda and conspiracy theories” they hear.
Bush also pressed Iran to return at once to international talks on its nuclear program and threatened consequences if the Iranians do not.
For 20 minutes, the president said exactly what he was expected to say. Bush insisted the United States “desires peace,” which some people find a little hard to believe; and argued that Americans “respect Islam,” which doesn’t exactly ring true in the Middle East. Bush added that Iran “must abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions,” in practically the exact same words he used the last time he was at the U.N., though the president never got around to saying how he hopes to achieve the goal.
So, really, what was the point? As Slate’s Fred Kaplan noted, aside from naming an envoy to Sudan, the president made clear that “he has no plans to change course, no desire to talk with his enemies, no proposals to put on the table, no initiatives of any sort.”
In his closing, President Bush posed a challenge to the General Assembly: “The nations gathered in this chamber must make a choice. … Will we support the moderates and reformers who are working for change across the Middle East, or will we yield the future to the terrorists and extremists?”
Which “moderates and reformers” is he talking about? What kind of “change across the Middle East”? What actions is he proposing the nations take? Or is he just reciting bromides, uninterested in the answers or in how “this chamber” — which, undeniably, has a dreadful record on such issues — might try to deal with them?
The sad fact is that, even among Middle Eastern countries governed by aspiring or actual democrats, the United States is less and less a moral model. Our beacon has dimmed not because of who we are but because of what we’ve done. And President Bush made clear today that he’s not going to do anything differently.
Nearly three weeks ago, the White House announced its third “major public-relations offensive” in less than two years addressing Iraq, the Middle East, the war on terror, and the president’s drive to connect all of them in the public’s mind. Today was the last element of the p.r. campaign.
And what have we learned in these 19 days? First, we learned that the news networks will give Bush all the airtime he wants, whether he has anything new to say or not. Second, we learned the Bush doesn’t, in fact, have anything new to say. Third, we learned the president’s team is under the impression that simply repeating the same talking points, and using the same arguments as part of the same election strategy, is enough to help tip the scales a little in the GOP’s favor.
And fourth, that they may actually be right.