Strategic Deception

[Darranar]

The big papers are taking President Bush's Middle East speech seriously, so far. They've noted his rhetoric seems to challenge 50 years of symbiotic coddling of non-democratic Middle East regimes, justified up to now on the argument of pursuing our national interests. As Robin Wright of The Washington Post notes, there will be no further entertainment of the once-convenient notion of 'Islamic exceptionalism'—where Islam was assumed to be incompatible with democratic government and therefore excused from otherwise universal human and political rights standards.

Privately, many will point to the surreal moment in the speech, made November 6 at the National Endowment for Democracy, where he described the principles for "successful societies" with a list of everything his administration has done to weaken American democracy at home. Sadly, Bush’s double standards and Animal Farm rhetoric are no longer big news.

But the flaw in his argument—revealing an intentional deception—is.

The speech was ostensibly designed to reframe the twin post-conflict failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, using the signing of the $87 billion supplemental appropriation for Iraq as a backdrop. Bush dropped the "Global War on Terror," and placed both regions into the larger historical context of the "Global Democratic Revolution." He wants us to believe that his efforts in the Middle East and Southwest Asia are the logical extension of the historical force that toppled Fascism in World War II and Communism during the Cold War. If we were wondering what Condoleezza Rice was going to contribute now that she’s "in charge" of Iraq, the former Soviet historian has clearly delivered.

http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/9352
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This is an excellent article.

[bemildred]

1. Good piece.

Unfortunately, there is no reason to think that the problem
will be resolved in a sensible way.

WRT Mr. Bush's speech: They are grasping for straws, notice that
they have no new ideas to solve the mess they have made. The
"smart weapons" and "revolution in military affairs" were supposed
to do the job, but they fell flat on their face in record time.
It's still the same old dumb explosion at the end and nothing is
going to fix that, any Iraqi with an RPG makes just as smart a
weapon as you could ask for.