What about the Bush doctrine? The Freedom Agenda

[maddezmom]

What about the Bush doctrine?
Email|Print|Single Page| Text size – + By Jeff Jacoby
Globe Columnist / May 28, 2008
REMEMBER George W. Bush? He was the president who warned in 2002 that Iran and North Korea were part of an "axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world." On his watch, he vowed, the United States would "not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons."

more stories like thisBush was the leader who pledged at his second inauguration to support "democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world." He let it be known that the truculence of rogues and dictators would not be indulged. "Some," he said pointedly, "have unwisely chosen to test America's resolve - and have found it firm."

Whatever became of him? The president who in the wake of Sept. 11 posed a stark choice to the sponsors of jihadist violence - "You are either with us, or you are with the terrorists" - where is he now? And, more important, where is the foreign policy he once stood for?

For some time now it has been apparent that the Bush Doctrine - with the signal exception of Iraq - didn't survive the Bush presidency. Notwithstanding the president's heartfelt words about supporting democratic reformers, for example, dissidents and freedom-seekers have largely been forgotten.

MORE:http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/05/28/what_about_the_bush_doctrine/

punch-drunk President

In the last months of his Presidency, George Bush is attempting to revive, or at least rehabilitate, a program that once stood as a centrepiece of his foreign policy: the so-called Middle East Freedom Agenda. In trying to achieve this, Bush is looking increasingly like a punch-drunk fighter trying to land an unlikely knockout blow that might salvage his legacy.

The Freedom Agenda was built on a 2002 National Security Strategy assessment that advocated the active spreading or promotion of democracy throughout the Middle East to ensure US national security alongside regional development. However, with the stalling of the initiative in Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, and as a non-starter in Saudi Arabia, Yemen and elsewhere to date, the President is on the road spruiking his vision anew.

At Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh resort that played host to the World Economic Forum recently, the President called for “freedom and peace” across the region, a situation that could only be achieved through allowing Arab citizens to be treated with “the dignity and respect they deserve”. Indeed, truly honourable sentiments. Bush even went as far as to admonish, not by name but by implication, key allies such as President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt in denouncing single-party rule and the detention of opposition forces.

more:http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7417

McClellan interview on the Today's Show;
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/24870079#24870079

http://iraqforsale.org/

http://www.warprofiteers.com/article.php?list=type&type=176

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/41083/

[maddezmom]

1. Retreat From the Freedom Agenda

Retreat From the Freedom Agenda

By Jackson Diehl
Monday, April 24, 2006; Page A17

President Bush's retreat from the ambitious goals of his second term will proceed one small but fateful step further this Friday. That's when, after more than two years of stalling, the president will deliver a warm White House welcome to Ilham Aliyev, the autocratic and corrupt but friendly ruler of one of the world's emerging energy powers, Azerbaijan.

Here's why this is a tipping point: At the heart of Bush's democracy doctrine was the principle that the United States would abandon its Cold War-era practice of propping up dictators -- especially in the Muslim world -- in exchange for easy access to their energy resources and military cooperation. That bargain, we now know, played a major role in the emergence of al-Qaeda and other extremist anti-Western movements.

To his credit, the reelected Bush made a genuine stab at a different strategy last year in Azerbaijan and another Muslim country, Kazakhstan. Both resemble Iran or Iraq half a century ago. They are rapidly modernizing, politically unsettled, and about to become very, very rich from oil and gas.

With both Aliyev and Kazakhstan's Nursultan Nazarbayev planning elections last fall, Bush dispatched letters and senior envoys with a message: Hold an honest vote and you can "elevate our countries' relations to a new strategic level." The implicit converse was that, should they fail to deliver, there would be no special partnership -- no military deals, no aid, no presidential visits to Washington.

more:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/23/AR2006042301017.html