Hat Tip to BarbinMD who has a diary on the rec list about the Bush/Blair press conference. I was going to post this in the comments there, but it was getting too long, so I thought I would throw it out there as a diary. What Bush said is in the boxes.
instead of having foreign policies based upon trying to create a sense of stability, we have a foreign policy that addresses the root causes of violence and instability
By what stretch of the imagination can he claim that his foreign policy aims to create stability? We have left Afghanistan in tatters, under the increasing control of warlords. We have set in motion a civil war in Iraq, meanwhile destroying their infrastructure, torturing and killing indiscriminately. Now we sit on the sidelines while Israel and Hezbollah try to bomb each other into oblivion. Does he have the first clue about the root causes of violence and instability? Oh yeah, they hate freedom and democracy. That certainly explains the long history of cultural and religious strife in the region.
resentment and anger that was manifested in its, uh, on September the eleventh
Good Heavens! Is he unable to face questions about the Middle East without invoking 9/11? And what in the world does that have to do with the question posed?!? Blah, blah, blah, 9/11, blah, blah, blah, they hate our freedoms.
we will protect ourselves from further attack in the short run by being aggressive and chasing down the killers and bringing 'em to justice
This one is loaded, so let's take it phrase by phrase. When he says "we will protect ourselves from further attack", I have to ask why port security has never been beefed up, why terrorist connections to the Saudis have been largely ignored, what the mass imprisonment at Gitmo, extreme rendition and torture have accomplished, how have we been protected by the illegal spying on Americans? When he says "in the short run", I've got news for Shrub. We are well and truly out of the realm of "the short run" and have entered "the long haul". When he says we are "being aggressive and chasing down the killers", I have to admit we are being aggressive, but what happened to the search for Bin Laden? How many more #2 men do we have to go after in Iraq, and how many innocent Iraqis do we have to kill to get them? So he says we are "bringing 'em to justice"? With the exception of Saddam, seems to me we are just killing them.
they would like to harm our respective peoples because of what we stand for
I grant that he speaks the truth here, but it doesn't mean what he thinks it means. "They" don't hate our freedoms, they hate our policies and actions in the Middle East. Of course, acknowledging and understanding this would require thoughtful consideration and analysis. Shrub doesn't do thoughtful.
what you're seeing is, a clash of governing styles
What?!? Styles?!? I can't even begin to understand where this came from or what it means.
those that who want to impose their vision
Hm. Call me crazy, but aren't we the ones trying to impose our vision on the region? You know, the one where we decide which democracy is legitimate and which autocratic ruler is OK? Oh, and can't forget the one where we have unlimited access to their oil.
what the world is seeing is a desire by this country and our allies to defeat the ideology of hate with an ideology that has worked
Could someone please point me to this ideology that has worked? In the most basic analysis of our misadventure in the Middle East, our actions in the region have only exacerbated the "ideology of hate".
There's this, kind of, almost, a weird kind of elitism that says maybe, maybe certain people in certain parts of the world shouldn't be free.
First of all, where are these elites that say this? Aren't there quite a number of wingnuts, members of Bush's base, right here in the good `ol U.S. of A. who think all the anti-war liberals should be rounded up and shot? How about putting all illegal aliens from south of the border in camps? Judges who don't agree with the neocon agenda? Shoot `em. And just how free am I, knowing that my phone and bank records are being examined by my government?
I also believe that Iran would like to exert additional influence in the region. A theocracy would like to spread its influence
Let me see if I get this one - Iran, which is actually a part of the region, wants to have some influence, and that is a bad thing. But the US, which exists wholly apart from the region, wants to dictate who does what and who governs whom, and that is a good thing. Sorry, don't get the logic. And what about this theocratic influence he speaks of? In the Middle East, where it is an Islamic influence, this is apparently a bad thing. But in the US, we have fundamentalist Christians (and I use the term "Christians" loosely) influencing all manner of public policy from elementary education, to science, to public funding of charities, and this is a good thing. Again, sorry, don't get that logic.
How can this pathetic bully possibly be our president? In what bizarro world are we living?