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gilliam
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**Scrapbook: Tide begins to turn on Bush critics
**11mar05
GERMANY loves to criticise US President George W. Bush’s Middle East policies – just like Germany loved to criticise former president Ronald Reagan. But Reagan, when he demanded that Mikhail Gorbachev remove the Berlin Wall, turned out to be right. Could history repeat itself?
It was difficult not to cringe during Reagan’s speech in 1987. He didn’t leave a single Berlin cliche out of his script. At the end of it, most experts agreed that his demand for the removal of the Wall was inopportune, utopian and crazy. Yet three years later, East Germany had disappeared from the map.
And maybe history can repeat itself. Maybe the people of Syria, Iran or Jordan will get the idea in their heads to free themselves from their oppressive regimes just as the East Germans did. When the voter turnout in Iraq recently exceeded that of many Western nations, the chorus of critique from Iraq alarmists was, at least for a couple of days, quieted. Just as quiet as the chorus of Germany experts on the night of November 9, 1989, when the Wall fell.
– Claus Christian Malzahn in Der Spiegel in Germany
THIS “Arab Spring”, per the expression of the American media, must be encouraged and, if needed, defended by all those who see respect for human rights as a universal value. The merit of George Bush is to have held firm to his discourse from the day after 9/11 – apart from some unfortunate language about “the new crusade”. He developed the idea that the Muslim peoples have the right to freedom, to democracy, to prosperity. He didn’t do this only out of altruism but because he is convinced that such evolution corresponds to the security interests of the US.
– Le Monde editorial, France
WHAT may happen now, as a consequence of Iraq’s democratic elections, is that the war against terrorism will begin to turn into a war for democracy. What was negative will become positive. What was reactive will become creative. Here it is time to set down in type the most difficult sentence in the English language. That sentence is short and simple. It is this: Bush was right.
President George W. Bush wasn’t right to invade Iraq. His justifications for doing so were (almost all of them) either frivolous, in comparison to the scale of the venture, or were outright fraudulent. But on the defining, fundamental question, Bush was right. He understood that to defeat an idea, no matter how perverse and brutal it might be, it was necessary to have an opposite and superior idea. He understood, in other words – instinctively rather than intellectually – that the only way to win a war against terrorism was to turn it into a war for democracy. This is now happening.
– Richard Gwyn in Toronto Star in Canada
[MANY Europeans are] somewhat embarrassed by [the democratic changes in the Middle East]. Hadn’t they promised, governments and media alike, that the Arab street would rise up [against US military forces], that Islam would burn, that the American army would get bogged down, that the terrorist attacks would multiply, and that democracy would not result nor be exported? These dramas did not occur. Either Bush is lucky, or it is too early to judge or [Bush’s] analysis was not false.
– Guy Sorman, in Le Figaro in France
THERE have been many good reasons to criticise the messianic political style of Bush’s first term. But isn’t it time now to stop finger-pointing and bickering? After all, one has to acknowledge that Afghanistan and Iraq might have been catalysts for what we see now happening in Lebanon, in Egypt and even between the Palestinians and Israel. – Rudiger Lentz, from German broadcast network Deutsche Welle
theaustralian.news.com.au/printpage/0,5942,12505759,00.html
**11mar05
GERMANY loves to criticise US President George W. Bush’s Middle East policies – just like Germany loved to criticise former president Ronald Reagan. But Reagan, when he demanded that Mikhail Gorbachev remove the Berlin Wall, turned out to be right. Could history repeat itself?
It was difficult not to cringe during Reagan’s speech in 1987. He didn’t leave a single Berlin cliche out of his script. At the end of it, most experts agreed that his demand for the removal of the Wall was inopportune, utopian and crazy. Yet three years later, East Germany had disappeared from the map.
And maybe history can repeat itself. Maybe the people of Syria, Iran or Jordan will get the idea in their heads to free themselves from their oppressive regimes just as the East Germans did. When the voter turnout in Iraq recently exceeded that of many Western nations, the chorus of critique from Iraq alarmists was, at least for a couple of days, quieted. Just as quiet as the chorus of Germany experts on the night of November 9, 1989, when the Wall fell.
– Claus Christian Malzahn in Der Spiegel in Germany
THIS “Arab Spring”, per the expression of the American media, must be encouraged and, if needed, defended by all those who see respect for human rights as a universal value. The merit of George Bush is to have held firm to his discourse from the day after 9/11 – apart from some unfortunate language about “the new crusade”. He developed the idea that the Muslim peoples have the right to freedom, to democracy, to prosperity. He didn’t do this only out of altruism but because he is convinced that such evolution corresponds to the security interests of the US.
– Le Monde editorial, France
WHAT may happen now, as a consequence of Iraq’s democratic elections, is that the war against terrorism will begin to turn into a war for democracy. What was negative will become positive. What was reactive will become creative. Here it is time to set down in type the most difficult sentence in the English language. That sentence is short and simple. It is this: Bush was right.
President George W. Bush wasn’t right to invade Iraq. His justifications for doing so were (almost all of them) either frivolous, in comparison to the scale of the venture, or were outright fraudulent. But on the defining, fundamental question, Bush was right. He understood that to defeat an idea, no matter how perverse and brutal it might be, it was necessary to have an opposite and superior idea. He understood, in other words – instinctively rather than intellectually – that the only way to win a war against terrorism was to turn it into a war for democracy. This is now happening.
– Richard Gwyn in Toronto Star in Canada
[MANY Europeans are] somewhat embarrassed by [the democratic changes in the Middle East]. Hadn’t they promised, governments and media alike, that the Arab street would rise up [against US military forces], that Islam would burn, that the American army would get bogged down, that the terrorist attacks would multiply, and that democracy would not result nor be exported? These dramas did not occur. Either Bush is lucky, or it is too early to judge or [Bush’s] analysis was not false.
– Guy Sorman, in Le Figaro in France
THERE have been many good reasons to criticise the messianic political style of Bush’s first term. But isn’t it time now to stop finger-pointing and bickering? After all, one has to acknowledge that Afghanistan and Iraq might have been catalysts for what we see now happening in Lebanon, in Egypt and even between the Palestinians and Israel. – Rudiger Lentz, from German broadcast network Deutsche Welle
theaustralian.news.com.au/printpage/0,5942,12505759,00.html