Technically he may not be. Who really knows?
I go by the old saying of "by their actions you will know them".
This one quacks, walks and talks like a duck! And for good measure, signs a few PNAC letters just to make sure there's no confusion about which side of the fence he's stradling.
You're right that the labels are becoming meaningless but that's only because they know we're watching them and they don't want us labeling them.
As some of you read this - remember that Biden signed PNAC's letter requesting the draft be reinstated.
Can't blame the man for getting recognition some will say... Well maybe not, but you can certainly characterize him for the comments he made when accepting the DLC's award during their mutual love-fest:
At the Tipping Point: Democratization in the Middle East
Senator Biden's Remarks to the DLC on March 15, 2005
By Senator Joseph Biden
(As Prepared for Delivery)
A Terrible Beauty Has Been Born
Nearly a hundred years ago the great Irish poet William Butler Yeats, writing of his Ireland said: "The world has changed, it has changed utterly. A terrible beauty has been born."
And that is precisely what I'd like to talk to you about. The terrible
beauty of change in the Middle East.
As President Bush put it, and I quote: "A critical mass of events is taking the region in a hopeful new direction."
What are these critical mass of events he's talking about? There's a Palestinian--Iraqi election; the Saudi municipal elections; Egypt's President Mubarak's commitment to allow competitive elections for president; and the Lebanese people demanding Syria withdraw and that there be free parliamentary elections.
These events also raise a serious question: Have we reached the democratic tipping--point similar to the peaceful revolutions that occurred in Eastern Europe bringing down those communist regimes? Or will the region tip toward more radicalism, fundamentalism, and violence?
I believe an enlightened American foreign policy and a little luck and a lot of perseverance can help ensure that beauty is in fact born.
The Benefits of Democratization
In January, in his second inaugural address,
President Bush spoke with great eloquence about expanding freedom.
I was a little
frustrated by some of my Democratic colleagues and some of our friends around the world. Here's the headline from the leading Green newspaper in Germany, and I quote the headline: "Bush threatens more freedom." It seemed to me that distaste for the messenger has obscured the truth of his message. :puke:
Clearly
the President's speech struck a chord with the American people.The
benefits of freedom and the desire to share them with others go to the essence of who we are as a people, how we see ourselves, and our own national experience.
I think
the President was also right to link expanding democracy to our own self--interest. Liberal democracies tend not to attack one another. They tend not to abuse their own people. They tend not to produce terrorists. :puke:
Conversely, on 9--11 we learned the absence of democracy, halfway around the world, can do terrible horror to us here at home.
Now, some believe we're witnessing a clash of civilizations, but I reject that idea. I believe we're seeing a clash within a civilization.
The
Muslim world is divided between those who want to move their societies forward and those few who would retreat to the false promises of the past. Ironically, those who want to take their societies backwards gained strength from the region's autocratic leaders who call themselves our friends.
The autocrats seek to preserve the status quo. They're responsible for the almost total lack of political, economic and social openness in the Middle East.
When that happens, you know what happens. In the absence of any outlets for dissent, dissent is channeled underground.
And, in the Muslim world, that means it is channeled into the only place it can be heard: In
the mosque, where it is captured by radical Islamic fundamentalist clerics.The autocratic leaders buy their own peace by funding fundamentalist clerics, and cynically diverting the blame for their own failures in their own countries toward us and toward Israel.
We compound the problem -- and the irony -- by our support of those autocrats over the last several decades as the lesser of two evils, which has earned us
the enmity of the silent majority -- the majority of modern, moderate Arabs that they repressed.The fact is the autocrats and the radical fundamentalists have both become our problem. The only antidote is more openness and a move toward real democracy.
I also believe that history is on democracy's side.
In 1775 there was not a single democracy in the world. After our revolution there was one. Now there are 117 electoral democracies; some 60percent of the world's governments.
And as the number of democracies increase still further, pressure will mount on the tyrannical outliers. We may be witnessing this very phenomenon as we speak today.
Now, the tipping point events of recent weeks were triggered by other events that we had little or nothing to do with: Arafat's death... the assassination of Rafiq Hariri... terror attacks in Saudi Arabia... the increasingly vocal protests in Egypt.
And it was the Ayatollah Sistani, not this administration, who insisted on elections in Iraq sooner rather than later, though
President Bush was right to stick to the schedule.
But
the President's focus on expanding freedom -- and his clear rhetoric -- does make a difference. It helps embolden moderates and modernizers... and lifts the fear of reprisals. Providing that kind of space is
critical to progress.
Injecting a Little Realism
With all the promise out there, we also have to inject a little realism.
The last significant opportunity history delivered to President Bush -- an opportunity to unite the nation and the world -- I believe, was squandered.
Imagine if on 9--11 John Kennedy or Franklin Roosevelt or even Ronald Reagan had been president of the United States. Imagine what they would have said to us.
I believe you would have heard something like:
"My fellow Americans, we have a been dealt a terrible blow, but I have called a summit of the world's leading powers to help us crush this new phenomenon of evil. And I'm going to the United States Congress tomorrow to ask all Americans who are able to give to their country. We need
a new program of national service. And I'm introducing an energy policy to free us from the tyrannical grip of oil in the Middle East. It will take sacrifice, but I demand it of you."
Just imagine. Imagine that had been said.
And let's remember, it was
President Bush who was the late convert to the cause of expanding freedom. He arrived in Washington mocking the very idea of promoting democracy and nation--building. Just as many conservatives berated President Clinton for acting in the Balkans.
And the initial rationale for President Bush's two signature initiatives, Afghanistan and Iraq, was not the expansion of freedom. In each case, democracy is an ex post facto justification.
In the first, Afghanistan, we needed no justification. And in the second, we needed much.
As it now stands, there is a significant gap between the President's rhetoric and his policies. This dichotomy risks undermining the credibility we're trying to restore with modernizers throughout the Middle East.
Let me explain what I mean. The administration talks tough on dictatorial adversaries like Iran and North Korea, but it rarely sustains the heat on illiberal partners like China, Russia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
After all, we need China to help roll back North Korea's nuclear program.
We need Russia's help to assure that we can destroy those loose nuclear weapons that could fall into the hands of the wrong people, and to prevent Iran from going fully nuclear.
We need Pakistan's help to root out Al Qaeda and the remainder of the Taliban. We need Egypt's help on the Mid East peace process and in Iraq.
So here's the problem: The President's very strength -- the absolutism of his rhetoric -- creates a very mixed message when it runs into the reality of our short--term security interests.
It would help if the President acknowledged and explained that tension to the American people and the people around the world.
The Hard Work of Promoting Democracy
And finally, and perhaps most importantly, democratic promotion is hard work. It must go beyond rhetorical support and the passion of a single speech.
It's one thing to topple a tyrant, it's another to put something better in his or her place.
Our experience in Iraq demonstrates the unintended consequence of imposing democracy from outside by force without a clear plan for the day, the year, the decade after.
We still may succeed, as a matter of fact I believe we must succeed. But our mishandling of Iraq has allowed autocrats in the region to use the post--Saddam chaos as justification for denying their people more freedom.
You hear them say: "With me life is stable and predictable. Without me, we will reap the whirlwind. Without me it will be radical fundamentalism that will take our place." And it goes on and on and on.
I believe the most effective, sustainable way to advocate democracy is to work from the inside with those moderates and modernizers to build democratic institutions.
By that I mean political parties, an independent judiciary, an independent media, a modern education system, the civil society and non--governmental organizations, a private sector.
Elections, in the absence of these institutions, favor the most organized groups in those societies, which also tend to be the most radical.
To put it another way -- freedom and liberal democracy are not synonymous. The former without the latter is a recipe for chaos and for return to autocratic rule.
I'm not sure the Bush administration gets the distinction. And if it does, I know it's not acting on it yet.
Just follow the money. In next year's budget, the administration has requested $30 million less for the Middle East Partnership Initiative, the signature democratic promotional front for the region, $30 million less than last year. It makes the same request as last year for the National Endowment for Democracy, which has had great success in the building of political parties and non--governmental organizations, monitoring elections. It zeroes out regional democratic funds for Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
And the Administration continues to channel most of its economic funds to our illiberal friends through their central governments instead of directly to independent actors.
I consider President Mubarak a personal friend. I met with him for close to three hours in Sharm El Sheikh at his request this past December.
He was upset when I said we should change the mix in the aid we give you. We should make sure that non--governmental organizations promoting democracy get our help and our support. He didn't like it, but I think he understands it's a necessity.
We should be providing more of our money directly to these non--governmental organizations in Egypt to help train the journalists, the judges, the political organizations, instead of directly to the Mubarak administration.
We should be building schools in Pakistan to compete with the Madrassas, not giving open--ended assistance to the government to pay its own salaries.
Two years ago, I proposed the establishment of a private, non--profit Middle East Foundation. It would provide grants to those in the region working to promote a vibrant civil society, an independent media, political parties, the rule of law, modern education systems, human rights including women's rights, and the private sector.
The administration has embraced the idea and, with a little luck, it will become law this spring. But will we fund it?
I also believe that combating poverty in failed states is as important in the quest of expanding political freedom as anything else, in order to change the conditions that breed extremism. We must deal with poverty. Developmental assistance, debt relief, education reform -- all must be part of our arsenal. Freedom from fear and freedom from want are flip sides of the democratic coin.
The Great Struggle of Our Time and The War of Ideas
The great struggle of our time -- the struggle between freedom and radical Islamic fundamentalism -- is primarily a war of ideas and ideals.
There are 1.2 billion Muslims in the world. The vast, vast majority of them are not radical. But
they don't know of our ideas and our ideals. They only know of our military power.
To prevail, we clearly have to be strong militarily. But we also have to be smart, welding the force of our ideas and our ideals together with the force of our arms.
The spread of democracy is crucial to us winning that war and undercutting the ideology of radical Islamic fundamentalism.
But democracy is more than just about elections. Our goal must be to help build and support the institutions of liberal democracy. That takes time. It takes money. And it takes courage. It is a generational challenge.
If we begin the process, the generation behind us, the so--called X and Y Generations, is smarter, more capable and more patriotic than any generation before it. And they will finish the job, but we are going to have to start it.
I believe we are literally at the hinge of history.
I believe that our military power is necessary, but not sufficient, to change the world. It will be our ideas and our ideals -- the things we value, the things we stand for, the same things that brought the Berlin Wall down -- that will nudge the world toward more freedom and democracy.
And we do it for our own safety's sake as well as the sake of the people who would be free, for only a few generations, a very few generations, have been delivered to such a moment, such an opportunity.
As another Irish poet, Seamus Heaney, wrote in his poem The Cure at Troy: "History said don't hope of this side of the grave. But then, once in a lifetime, the longed for tidal wave of justice rises up, and hope and history rhyme."
We have an opportunity to make hope and history rhyme. Let's seize it.
http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=106&subid=122&contentid=253239Wow. A praise be to Bush speech with a palliative bone at the end that there's a little room for improvement.
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