Sweet Nothings: Bush's UN Speech Offers Platitudes Instead Of Solutions

http://slate.msn.com/id/2107027/
Fred Kaplan

George W. Bush doesn't like speaking at the United Nations. You can see it in his eyes ”the flicker of perplexity, bordering on distress, when he recites a line that draws surefire cheers on the campaign trail but only blank, distant stares from the assembly of world leaders.

This morning's speech wasn't as dreadful as the one he gave last year, but it suffered from the same basic inadequacy: He catalogs some of the world's problems, then suggests nothing ”not the vaguest plan of action”for how to deal with any of them.

An address before the U.N. General Assembly is, by nature and expectation, a gush of bromides. But given that President Bush has
recently begun to realize that he needs help with Iraq, Afghanistan, and the war on terrorism, you would think he'd muster something more energizing than this:

Because I believe the advance of liberty is the path to both a
safer and better world, today I propose establishing a
Democracy Fund within the United Nations. The fund
would help countries lay the foundations of democracy by
instituting the rule of law and independent courts, a free
press, political parties, and trade unions. Money from the
fund would also help set up voter precincts in polling places
and support the work of election monitors. To show our
commitment to the new democracy fund, the United States
will make an initial contribution. I urge all other nations to
contribute as well.

The first insult here is that the United Nations already has agencies for much of this work. The second is that Bush doesn't even put a dollar figure on his "initial contribution." It's as if he were proposing that his most ambitious project”the global propagation of democracy”be funded through the March of Dimes.

snip

The sum of Bush's speech = I was right to invade Iraq and unseat Saddam, I was right to mislead the world in doing it, Palestinians are bad, bad, bad; Israel is good, good, good, and anyone who supports the Palestinians is bad; we are winning the war on terror (just don't look at Iraq); you are either with us or againsts us; and yes, I am still the idiot I was when I first took office.

...and an entourage of Secret Service agents, walked out to a waitng limo and left. Dr. Susan E. Rice is senior adviser for national security affairs for the Kerry-Edwards campaign. Dr Rice was very assertive in an interview on CNN (I think it was CNN) about Bush being all rhetoric and no action. Dr Rice saw an opportunity for Bush to assemble leaders of othere countries immediately following his speech today and attempt to get a coalition of assistance on Iraq, but instead he let the opportunity pass. I can't find a transcript of her interview but I was most impressed by not only her observations but how ell she was able to articlulate the points. Here is an article she wrote about a weeka ago:

<snip>
Thursday, September 9, 2004

The other Dr. Rice on Iraq

By SUSAN E. RICE
GUEST COLUMNIST

The president's national security adviser has one of the world's most challenging jobs. But few of the challenges are tougher than the one Condoleezza Rice faced when she spoke in the Northwest this week: Finding a silver lining in a national security policy that has proved dangerously misguided and in the record of a president, George W. Bush, who has failed to make America safer.

Dr. Rice and I share a last name (no relation), but her boss and my boss, John Kerry, have very different views about how to strengthen our nation's security. No issue better highlights that contrast than Iraq. Both men agreed that Saddam Hussein posed a dangerous threat and had to be held accountable. Their divide has been over how best to deal with that threat and where we should go from here.

<link> http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/189984_rice09.html

This Dr Rice is a great asset for not only Kerry/Edwards but for the democratic party and the country. She was great!

Will the democracy fund spend any money in the U.S.?