Why Bush is fundamentally wrong The Times
Thursday January 31 2002
Foreign Editor's briefing: January 31
By Bronwen MaddoxPRESIDENT Bush's State of the Union address, the most powerful speech he has delivered to America, should rightly be seen as an essay in fundamentalism.
It laid out the principles which he hopes will eventually transform American culture and protect its society. The risk is that more immediately, they will seriously harm US relations with the rest of the world.
Yesterday it was clear that the speech will swell further his huge popularity at home. Willing for the moment to put economic worries aside, Americans rallied to his call for an expansion of the war against terror, and for a new civic activism to spread American values at home and abroad. But in Bush's mistaken choice of Iran as a target, his silence about Israel and his missionary call to propagate American values, he risks leaving the United States standing very much alone on the world stage.
As the President stood before Congress on Tuesday night, he was barely recognisable from his debut a year ago. The delivery, greeted by 49 standing ovations and 33 cheers, was incomparably more confident, to an audience high on the drama of war and the trappings of siege.
The Afghan leader Hamid Karzai, prominent in the gallery in his green robe, received the most tumultuous ovation; Senator Jesse Helms, immobilised by illness, was the only still figure below him. The red, turquoise and yellow suits wrapped around the square frames of female members of Congress bobbed about like a toddler's building blocks, though Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice managed more poise in dark brown.
Bush made a gesture towards business as usual in a rushed final passage on the economy. He tried to say that you could have it all: tax cuts, huge defence spending, medical care, and lots of jobs. You can't, and the numbers will not add up throughout his presidency. But the chamber was indulgent; the passion was all for the War on Terror.
Bush made clear for the first time how he intends to take the war forwards. He has discerned an "axis of evil" in Iran, Iraq and North Korea, countries which have been "pretty quiet since September 11", although "we know their true nature".
The notion appeared to receive solid support across the country, but it is a serious mistake, and the inclusion of Iran the most damaging part.
For a start, the idea of an "axis of evil" between three countries which are barely speaking is nonsense. Iran did say this week that it would resume flights for pilgrims to Baghdad, but mutual hostility still runs high. As former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger argues, the US has never managed to run its foreign policy with both Iran and Iraq as enemies. Any military action by Bush against Iraq would need the tacit support of Iran.
There is no question that Iran can cause trouble. It clearly wants influence over western Afghanistan, but there is still much doubt about whether it was behind the shipment of arms to the Palestinian leader, Yassir Arafat, which has so enraged Washington.
Yet it is a large, sophisticated country, with many friends in the region, including Saudi Arabia. After September 11, a great deal was written in the West about whether Islam made economic development impossible by allowing secular institutions no separate legitimacy.
For all the recent dominance of Iranian religious hardliners, the country has attempted to keep many institutions secular until just below the highest level. It may well fail in that ambitious experiment, but the complexity of its attempt renders naive Bush's complaint that "an unelected few repress the Iranian people's hope for freedom".
For the past few years, European governments have tried to improve relations with Tehran; Blair urged this on Bush in a five-page memo on September 12, according to The Washington Post. Kofi Annan, United Nations Secretary-General, in Tehran at the weekend, urged it on the world. While Bush made a vague reference in his speech to working closely "with our coalition", he is entirely wrong if he thinks there is a coalition for attacking Iran.
Nor, probably, is there for action against North Korea, or even Iraq. His speech was striking for its lack of mention of the United Nations, or of Tony Blair. That supports other signs of a marked cooling off in the transatlantic relationship since November. America's allies will also be perturbed by the lack of any mention of Israel.
The message is that America will go it alone if it must. That surfaced explicitly when Bush gave warning that if other countries "do not act (against terror), America will". This tone is not a construction of separate foreign policy decisions, stapled together country by country. It springs from the philosophy which Bush wants to define his presidency: of America's transformation, and its mission in the world.
"After America was attacked, it was as if our entire country looked into a mirror, and saw our better selves," he said, with an inevitable echo of his own personal transformation when he turned his back on his wild youth. "Evil is real and it must be opposed," he said. "We have been called to a unique role in human events."
In a clear echo of his father's "thousand points of light", he called on every American to give two years, or 4,000 hours, to such service. (Helms managed to get to his feet at this point, a generous act for a start, given that two years is a more demanding proposition if you are 80 and not the President's 55.) It would be right to call Bush's vision fundamentalist. Even if he will no longer use the word, it is a crusade. He is asserting that the values he believes are central to American society should determine policy at home and abroad. While nodding towards "Islam's own rich history", he declared that "America will lead by defending liberty and justice because they are right and true and unchanging for all people everywhere".
Well, America may have to do it alone, on the back of this speech, and hope that 4,000 hours from each citizen makes up for a lack of friends in the rest of the world.