Posted on 11/23/2003 1:09:19 AM PST by kattracks
Some of President Bush's most strident critics acknowledge that his trip last week to Britain was not the failure they expected, while his allies see it as a historic moment in international diplomacy.
The keystone was Mr. Bush's speech Wednesday, peppered with self-deprecating humor and reaffirming the "special relationship" between the United States and Great Britain.
"The British people are the sort of partners you want when serious work needs doing," Mr. Bush said, thanking Prime Minister Tony Blair for being his staunch ally in "a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East."
Mr. Bush also vowed that the United States no longer would turn a blind eye to repression by Middle East "elites" for the sake of preserving stability — a reference not only to American enemies such as Syria and Iran, but also allies like Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
Mr. Bush even embraced the shouts of thousands of protesters who marked his arrival in London as the most unpopular American president in European eyes since Ronald Reagan during the Cold War days of the 1980s.
"There were people in Baghdad," the president noted, "who weren't allowed to do that until recently."
Mr. Bush more than met expectations, especially with a speech that represented his "finest hour on the international stage," said Nile Gardiner, an international-affairs fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
"The speech was powerful and projected tremendous clarity and vision," Mr. Gardiner said. "Many were expecting President Bush to make some sort of apology to his critics. Fortunately, there was nothing of the sort in the speech."
Steven Hess, presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution, a liberal think tank, said he had worried that Mr. Bush was making a trip to Britain at "the wrong time."
But the president, he said, "did exceedingly well."
"I think the major speech was particularly elegant," Mr. Hess said. "I'm sure [Mr. Bush] surprised those who were looking for an inarticulate Texas cowboy."
The Independent, a British newspaper that has been a consistent critic of the Bush administration, hailed the president for delivering a speech "with a degree of verve, eloquence and even humor that defied his reputation as the least articulate American president since Calvin Coolidge."
The Guardian, another left-leaning partisan newspaper, said Mr. Bush's speech was a "palatable, even attractive" expression of the Bush Doctrine of fighting terrorism around the globe.
Thursday's protest of Mr. Bush in London attracted a crowd of 70,000, London police said, far fewer than the 100,000 organizers predicted and well below the more than 500,000 who took to the streets earlier this year to oppose the war.
Bob Boorstin, senior vice president for national security at the liberal Center for American Progress, said that if Mr. Bush made a good impression in Europe, it was because expectations were so low.
"It reminded me of the debates in the 2000 election," Mr. Boorstin said. "The bar was set so low that if he spoke in complete sentences and delivered the speech, and there were no overt acts of violence, then the visit would be seen as a success."
Mr. Boorstin, a foreign-policy adviser in the Clinton administration, said Mr. Bush did little to temper the "barrage of hatred for the United States' behavior under the Bush administration."
Europe, by and large, still views the president as a threat to world order, he said.
"People like America, but they don't like Bush," Mr. Boorstin said. "It was a good speech, no question. But the problem is really not in the words, but the actions. If you look at that speech and look at what's going on in Iraq, it's polar opposites.
"He preaches democracy, but there is no transparency at all in the way the United States is governing Iraq."
Mr. Bush earned "grudging respect in Europe," Mr. Gardiner said, though "he will never be loved" on the continent.
"Increasingly, he is a man respected for doing what he says and implementing what he believes," Mr. Gardiner said. "And in the end, that is what really matters.
"Reagan was even more reviled in Europe than Bush is, and look at what he achieved."
If that is the measure of accomplishment let's hope G.W. ends up more 'reviled in Europe' than Ronald Reagan!
Awww, I'll bet that just tears him up...
They got the Texas cowboy, alright--they're just too ignorant to know it.
Har, dee, har, har! Now, that has to the best damn complement one could ever pay to a person. President Ronald Reagan won World War III (i.e. the Cold War). President George W. Bush is kicking ass in World War IV (the Islamic Jihad Terrorist War). Meanwhile, the puscilanemous Europeans are shaking in fright again. I like cowboys. I rank them in this order. Ronald Reagan, George Bush and John Wayne.
If the Guardian said this, we may assume that the visit was a ringing, resounding, history-making success. That newspaper is staffed by some of the most unrepentant leftists in all of journalism, and coming from them, this statement is high praise indeed.
-ccm
Geesh! Give him a break.
How long did it take to rebuild Germany and Japan's governments post WWII?
I think you meant to say, "...was not the failure they had hoped for."
"I'm sure [Mr. Bush] surprised those who were looking for an inarticulate Texas cowboy."
"Those", of course, are the people who are stupid enough to believe the propaganda and misguided enough to create it.
"Europe, by and large, still views the president as a threat to world order"
Yes, and Europe will begin to recover from this paralyzing decadence, a disease that will otherwise prove fatal, if and when she comprehends the fact that President Bush is the leader to lead the world, including Europe, out of the war that fanatical Islamic terrorists have declared and insisted upon waging, and into peace, prosperity, and liberty, equality, and justice for all.
Europeans would understand all this, if their thinking were not so densely clouded by this disease of decadence and if they were exposed to the kind of clear thinking that President Bush offers them rather than the confused, strategically and morally murky thinking with which President Bush's critics and their agents in the "newsmedia" barrage them.
Population of England, 2001: 49,138,831
Protestors = ~.0014% of the population.
It is better to keep one's mouth shut and be perceived a fool than to open it and remove all doubt. Let them yell and scream--it only hastens their own demise.
They do get it and it's called SPIN. : )
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