International Reaction to Bush's Speech on Iraq and Terrorism

[Barrett808]

Comment and analysis from Paris, Munich, Toronto, Sydney, Milan, Nairobi, Beijing, London, Moscow, Tehran, Amman, Jerusalem, São Paulo, Instanbul, Athens, and Jakarta

Paris Le Figaro (conservative), Sept. 9: The United States finds itself confronting the greatest possible tension in the Middle East, one year from a decisive presidential election. One has the impression that…something will crack very soon….One doesn’t really know whether the first crack will appear in Iraq or on the Israeli-Palestinian front—or somewhere else, where we least expect it. But the certainty of an imminent crisis is there. And if one needed extra proof, it was there in the complete U-turn President Bush took in his speech, when he launched an almost pathetic appeal for help to the European allies whose contributions he had formerly spurned.

Munich Süddeutsche Zeitung (centrist), Sept. 9: George Bush has given a lot of speeches but possibly none was as difficult for him as his latest address to the nation. He of all people, who with unshakable faith in his and America's strength wanted to reorder Iraq and the Middle East, had to eat humble pie and ask for help from his political enemies and critics at home in Washington and in the world. Regardless of whether Bush was driven by "optimism with a touch of naivety," as The New York Times wrote, or whether it was arrogance, conviction, or a series of negative circumstances, one thing is certain: The neo-radicals in Washington must grudgingly admit that the world power of the United States has limits and that they are narrower than they may have supposed.
—Wolfgang Koydl

Toronto Toronto Star (liberal), Sept. 9: There are no signs of a Bush conversion on the road to Baghdad. Instead of coming clean in his speech this week, the president slid back into the muck of misconceptions and myth first constructed to manufacture consent for a war the U.S. administration wanted too much....Now that the Bush Doctrine's underbelly is exposed, now that Saddam is on the threshold of bringing down the son as well as the father, panic is driving a more cooperative approach to international relations....Throwing Bush a lifeline makes good sense and better policy if it restores some global balance. That delicate fulcrum will have to be found at the Security Council, where a significant diplomatic price will be attached to getting the United States out of the Iraq quagmire and perhaps saving Bush's second term. Canada's role is clear. With all available troops committed to the real war on terrorism in Afghanistan, Ottawa can only urge allies to respond to the U.S. cry for assistance and press Washington equally hard to accept conditions that will attract that help.
—James Travers

Sydney Australian Financial Review (centrist), Sept. 9: The most important segment of George Bush's speech to rally support for the faltering effort to pacify Iraq was also the shortest. The U.S. President...devoted just seven or eight short paragraphs to the case for other nations to back the U.S. and British occupying forces in Iraq with troops and money of their own under a new U.N. resolution....Having spent much of the past year disparaging the United Nations and the multilateral ideal, Bush may have to eat a bit more humble pie to achieve this goal. Painful though this may be, he should be prepared to do so....France, Russia, and Germany, which opposed the war and fell out with the United States as a result, must also put aside any lingering resentment and negotiate the proposed new resolution in good faith, recognizing that the United Nations' peacemaking record has been patchy and that the new mandate will need to reflect this.

(more)

http://www.worldpress.org/Americas/1525.cfm

[NJCher]

1. thanks for posting this

Another poster made reference to the international coverage yesterday so I was off in search of it but with limited time, had no luck. Really wanted to read it, so I appreciate the post.


Cher

[grytpype]

2. Wow. Very strong words.

This would have been unthinkable three months ago.

[grytpype]

3. Check out this one from Nairobi, Kenya!

Nairobi Daily Nation (independent), Sept. 9: I did not know whether to laugh or cry. But I was disgusted yesterday watching U.S. President George Bush on TV asking the U.N. family to get involved in the continuing efforts to pacify Iraq. This was the same unilateralist Bush who so arrogantly shut out the United Nations and the international community in general as the United States took its so-called war on terror into Iraq to send packing the government of President Saddam Hussein. Now that winning the peace is proving so much harder than winning the war and the body count of U.S. casualties is rising, President Bush has the guts, quite shamelessly, to appeal to a sense of responsibility by the U.N. member-states. Suddenly, the mighty United States is not the Alpha and the Omega, but a nation in doubt about itself and coming to realize that even the greatest power on earth cannot imperiously go it alone.
—Macharia Gaitho