Stephen Zunes

President George Bush gave his 2007 State of the Union address on January 23. While the speech covered many domestic issues, Bush also laid out his foreign policy approach to Iraq, Iran, terrorism, and democracy promotion. Excerpts from the president’s speech are in italics; my comments follow.

President George W. Bush’s address before the United Nations General Assembly on September 19 appeared to be designed for the domestic U.S. audience. Indeed, few of the foreign delegations or international journalists present could take seriously his rhetoric regarding the promotion of democracy in the Middle East, given the reality of U.S. policy in the region.

Despite promises from the White House that the address to the nation on the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy would be non-political, President George W. Bush devoted much the speech to defending his unrelated policy on Iraq.

This essay evaluates some of the key claims made by President George W. Bush in his State of the Union address of January 31, 2006.

The foreign policy segments of President George W. Bush’s state of the Union address spoke to values and concerns that resonate with the majority of Americans from across the political spectrum. Unfortunately, much of what was said during his speech was quite misleading.

Commentators in the mainstream media seem genuinely perplexed over the polite but notably unenthusiastic reception given to President George W. Bush’s September 21 address before the United Nations General Assembly. Why wasn’t a speech that emphasized such high ideals as democracy, the rule of law, and the threat of terrorism better received?

As we gather tonight, hundreds of thousands of American servicemen and women are deployed across the world in the war on terror. By bringing hope to the oppressed and delivering justice to the violent, they are making America more secure.

Though no one should question the commitment and bravery of American servicemen and women, their missions of invading and occupying foreign countries and engaging in high altitude bombing and urban counterinsurgency operations that kill civilians has brought more fear than hope, delivered more violence than justice, and has created an unprecedented level of anti-American sentiment in the Islamic world and beyond that has actually made America less secure.

Events during the past two years have set before us the clearest of divides: Between those who seek order and those who spread chaos; between those who work for peaceful change and those who adopt the methods of gangsters; between those who honor the rights of man and those who deliberately take the lives of men and women and children, without mercy or shame.

Considerable attention has been given to President George W. Bush’s February 26 speech before the right-wing American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC outlining his vision of the Middle East in the aftermath of a possible U.S. invasion of Iraq. The speech was broadcast live over national radio and television and given widespread coverage in the print media, yet few critical voices questioning the major points raised in this sanctimonious and highly misleading address were given the opportunity to offer commentary.

[President Bush’s] attempt to put Baathist Iraq on par with Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia is ludicrous. Hitler’s Germany was the most powerful industrialized nation in the world when it began its conquests in the late 1930s and Soviet Russia at its height had the world’s largest armed forces and enough nuclear weapons to destroy humankind. Iraq, by contrast, is a poor Third World country that has been under the strictest military and economic embargo in world history for more than a dozen years after having much of its civilian and military infrastructure destroyed in the heaviest bombing in world history.