Hypocrisy 101; For Bush-Fans, Everywhere

[JohnnyMarzetti]

"President Bush's inaugural address placing the fostering of democratic freedoms around the world at the center of U.S. foreign policy drew a skeptical reaction Friday in the Arab world, where analysts questioned whether the rhetoric of the speech was consistent with the administration's actions in the Middle East.

In interviews, however, a number of political analysts and commentators commended the values outlined in Bush's speech, in which he proclaimed that the United States "will persistently clarify the choice before every ruler and every nation, the moral choice between oppression, which is always wrong, and freedom, which is eternally right." But they said the words belied the fact that the United States supports several authoritarian governments in the Middle East and would ring hollow to the many Arabs who perceive U.S. policy in the oil-rich region as motivated by financial concerns and support for Israel.

"It's scary stuff, so sweeping and overarching you don't know what to make of it," said Sadiq Azm, a Syrian writer and reform advocate. "He's saying that what's good for America is good for everyone else. We are used to this kind of bombast from our Arab leaders. But it's been a long time since I've heard it in English."

But the pace of change has been glacial, and many frustrated reformers say the apparent disarray of the U.S. project in Iraq has given autocratic governments an excuse to forgo even the most modest political reforms. Offering a clean-government alternative to administrations rife with corruption, Islamic parties are surging in popularity, a trend that deeply frightens many secular Arabs and dampens their enthusiasm for free elections.

Many Arabs, including some involved in democratic reform movements, also say the U.S. record of alliances in the Middle East is at odds with Bush's agenda. The United States supported Saddam Hussein in the 1980s during Iraq's long war with Iran. The Bush administration has applied steady pressure on largely resourceless Syria, including economic sanctions for its military presence in Lebanon, while leaving alone the ruling family of Saudi Arabia, which sits atop a quarter of world's petroleum reserves."

A number of governments in the region operate under decades-old emergency laws, which Syria's government justifies by Israel's occupation of the Golan Heights. The laws give the military and domestic security services broad powers to arrest political dissidents, authority that might vanish if the two countries were to achieve peace." [This sounds like the Middle East's version of Homeland Security; retaining authority, by reigning-in political-dissidents! ]

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"An Arab professor of political science drew parallels between the words of Bush and Usama bin Ladin, saying the president had made the word freedom banal in the same way as the al-Qaida leader had the word jihad.

"The two men have both invoked their favourite concepts without ever putting them into practice," Assad Abu Khalil, who works in the United States, told Aljazeera."

[Hook Dem]