Saturday, November 13, 2004
The Liberal & Conservative Neocons: how spreading democracy has become the main pillar of our common national security policy.
President and Prime Minister Blair Discuss Iraq, Middle East
The East Room
PRESIDENT BUSH: Thank you. Welcome. I'm pleased to welcome a statesman and a friend back to the White House. Prime Minister Blair is a visionary leader. I've come to know him as a man of unshakeable convictions. America's alliance with Great Britain has never been stronger, and we're working closely every day to spread that freedom that leads to peace.
Our two nations have shared in some of the most hopeful and positive achievements of our time. The people of Afghanistan have now chosen their President, in a free election. The Taliban and the terrorists did everything they could to intimidate the long-suffering people of that country. Yet men and women lined up at the polls, some of them waiting for hours to have their first taste of democracy.
The success of Afghanistan's election is a standing rebuke to cynicism and extremism, and a testimony to the power of liberty and hope. The people of the United States and Great Britain can be proud of the role we have played in aiding the rise of a free nation, and in so doing, making our countries more secure.
Together we're serving the same cause in Iraq. Prime Minister Allawi authorized military operations to rid Fallujah of Saddam holdouts and foreign terrorists, and American and Iraqi forces have made substantial progress in the last several days. Our coalition is training Iraqi security forces who are performing bravely, and taking increasing responsibility for their country's security. British, American and other coalition forces are helping provide stability that is necessary for free elections. And U.N. officials are helping the Iraqi people prepare for those elections, to be held in January.
As those elections draw near, the desperation of the killers will grow, and the violence could escalate. The success of democracy in Iraq will be a crushing blow to the forces of terror, and the terrorists know it. The defeat of terror in Iraq will set that nation on a course to lasting freedom and will give hope to millions, and the Iraqi people know it.
The United States and Great Britain have shown our determination to help Iraqis achieve their liberty and to defend the security of the world. We'll continue to stand with our friends, and we will finish the job.
Prime Minister Blair and I also share a vision of a free, peaceful, a democratic broader Middle East. That vision must include a just and peaceful resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict based on two democratic states -- Israel and Palestine -- living side-by-side in peace and security.
Our sympathies are with the Palestinian people as they begin a period of mourning. Yet the months ahead offer a new opportunity to make progress toward a lasting peace. Soon Palestinians will choose a new President. This is the first step in creating lasting democratic political institutions through which a free Palestinian people will elect local and national leaders.
We're committed to the success of these elections, and we stand ready to help. We look forward to working with a Palestinian leadership that is committed to fighting terror and committed to the cause of democratic reform. We'll mobilize the international community to help revive the Palestinian economy, to build up Palestinian security institutions to fight terror, to help the Palestinian government fight corruption, and to reform the Palestinian political system and build democratic institutions.
We'll also work with Israeli and Palestinian leaders to complete the disengagement plan from Gaza and part of the West Bank. These steps, if successful, will lay the foundation for progress in implementing the road map, and then lead to final status negotiations.
We seek a democratic, independent and viable state for the Palestinian people. We are committed to the security of Israel as a Jewish state. These objectives -- two states living side-by-side in peace and security -- can be reached by only one path: the path of democracy, reform, and the rule of law.
All that we hope to achieve together requires that America and Europe remain close partners. We are the pillars of the free world. We face the same threats and share the same belief in freedom and the rights of every individual. In my second term, I will work to deepen our transatlantic ties with the nations of Europe. I intend to visit Europe as soon as possible after my inauguration. My government will continue to work through the NATO Alliance and with the European Union to strengthen cooperation between Europe and America.
America applauds the success of NATO and EU enlargement, and welcomes the stability and prosperity that that enlargement brings. We must apply the combined strength and moral purpose of Europe and America to effectively fight terror, and to overcome poverty and disease and despair, to advance human dignity, and to advance freedom.
In all that lies ahead in the defense of freedom, in the advance of democracy, and the spread of prosperity, America, the United Kingdom, and all of Europe must act together.
Mr. Prime Minister, welcome.
PRIME MINISTER BLAIR: Thank you, Mr. President, and thank you for your gracious welcome to me here in the White House. And once again, many congratulations on your reelection.
There are three major issues that arise. The United States and the United Kingdom have stood together since September the 11th, 2001, in order to combat this new form of global terrorism that we face. And the three things that we can do most to make sure that we defeat this terrorism, apart from being ever vigilant on security, but, first of all, to bring democracy to Afghanistan, which we are doing, as the successful election of President Karzai shows. And that is quite magnificent tribute not just to the courage of the Afghan people, but actually, also to the power of democracy.
Secondly, we have to complete our mission in Iraq, make sure that Iraq is a stable and a democratic country. And I have no doubt at all that whatever the difficulties the terrorists and insurgents, supporters of Saddam Hussein may pose for us, that we will overcome those difficulties -- ourselves, the multinational force, together with the Iraqi government -- and ensure that Iraq can be that democratic, stable state that the vast majority of Iraqis, I know, will want to see.
And the third thing is, as the President rightly said a moment or two ago, we meet at a crucial time where it is important that we revitalize and reinvigorate the search for a genuine, lasting and just peace in the Middle East. I would like to repeat my condolences to the Palestinian people at this time.
As you will have seen, we have set out the steps that we believe are necessary to get into a process that will lead to the two-state solution that we want to see. And I think those steps are very clear. They are, first of all, making sure that we set out a clear vision -- that clear vision was articulated by President Bush some time ago, repeated by him today -- of a two-state solution, two democratic states living side-by-side together in peace.
The second thing is, we need to support those Palestinian elections. That is a chance for the first beginnings of democracy to take hold on the Palestinian side. So it's important that we support it. Thirdly, however, if we want a viable Palestinian state, we need to make sure that the political, the economic, and the security infrastructure of that state is shaped and helped to come into being. We will mobilize international opinion and the international community in order to do that.
The fourth thing is that Prime Minister Sharon's plan for disengagement is important. I think we recognized that when we were here at the White House back in April of this year. That disengagement plan is now going forward. It's important that we support it. And then, on the basis of this, we are able, in accordance with the principles of the road map, to get back into final status negotiation, so that we have that two-state solution. And I think there is every possibility that we can do this, with the energy and the will and the recognition that, in the end, it is only if the two states that we want to see living side-by-side are indeed democratic states where the rule of law and human rights are respected in each of them, that a just in peace could be secured.
I would also like to support very strongly what the President has just said about the transatlantic alliance. Again, I think there is a tremendous desire and willingness on the part of, certainly, our partners in the European Union, to make sure that that alliance is strong. It's necessary for the security of the world. It's necessary for us to be able to tackle many of the problems that confront us.
I look forward to working with the President over these coming months in order to try and secure that progress that we have laid out for you today, and also, of course, we have the opportunity to discuss the upcoming G8 presidency of the United Kingdom. And we intend to take those issues forward, as well.
So, Mr. President, once again, many, many thanks.
PRESIDENT BUSH: Sure.
PRIME MINISTER BLAIR: Thank you for your alliance and for your leadership at this time.
PRESIDENT BUSH: Welcome, thanks.
Terry.
Q Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you. With Yasser Arafat's death, what specific steps can Israel take to revive peace negotiations? And do you believe that Israel should implement a freeze on West Bank settlement expansion?
PRESIDENT BUSH: I believe that the responsibility for peace is going to rest with the Palestinian people's desire to build a democracy and Israel's willingness to help them build a democracy. I know we have a responsibility as free nations to set forth a strategy that will help the Palestinian people head toward democracy. I don't think there will ever be lasting peace until there is a free, truly democratic society in the Palestinian territories that becomes a state. And therefore, the responsibility rests with both the Palestinian people and the leadership which emerges, with the Israelis to help that democracy grow, and with the free world to put the strategy in place that will help the democracy grow.
PRIME MINISTER BLAIR: James.
Q Mr. President, can you say today that it is your firm intention that by the end of your second term in office, it is your goal that there should be two states -- Israel and Palestine -- living side-by-side?
PRESIDENT BUSH: I think it is fair to say that I believe we've got a great chance to establish a Palestinian state, and I intend to use the next four years to spend the capital of the United States on such a state. I believe it is in the interest of the world that a truly free state develop. I know it is in the interest of the Palestinian people that they can live in a society where they can express their opinion freely, a society where they can educate their children without hate, a society in which they can realize their dreams if they happen to be an entrepreneur. I know it's in Israel's interest that a free state evolve on her border. There's no other way to have a lasting peace, in my judgment, unless we all work to help develop the institutions necessary for a state to emerge: civil society, based upon justice, free speech, free elections, the right for people to express themselves freely. The first step of that is going to be the election of a new president, and my fervent hope is that the president embraces the notion of a democratic state.
I hate to put artificial time frames on things; unfortunately I've got one on my existence as President. It's not artificial, it's actually real. And I'd like to see it done in four years. I think it is possible. I think it is possible.
I think it is impossible to think that the President of the United States, or the Prime Minister of Great Britain can impose our vision. I think it's unrealistic to say, well, Bush wants it done, or Blair wants it done, therefore, it will happen. But I think it is very possible that it can happen, because I believe people want to live in a free society. And our job is to help it happen.
Thank you. Steve.
Q Thank you, Mr. President. Prime Minister Blair wants a international conference on the Middle East. What has to happen before you would sign on to that? And will you name a U.S. envoy? And what would you like to accomplish on this Europe trip that you're planning?
PRESIDENT BUSH: Let's see here. (Laughter.) I'll start with the -- accomplishing on the Europe trip. It is to remind people that the world is better off, America is better off, Europe is better off when we work together. And there's a lot we can accomplish working together. There's a lot we have accomplished working together.
We're working very closely to find al Qaeda and bring members of al Qaeda to justice. We've worked closely to free Afghanistan. We're working closely to interdict the flow of weapons of mass destruction. The Proliferation Security Initiative is based -- the membership of which is a lot of members of the EU. I mean, there's a lot of things we're working together on. NATO expansion we worked together on. It was such a refreshing moment when the new leaders of -- the leaders of the new countries in NATO walked in the room, in the Czech Republic. It was a fantastic moment to see these proud members walk in and say, we're now a member of the greatest alliance ever. And there's a lot we can continue to do.
First two questions?
Q Prime Minister Blair's idea about an international conference --
PRESIDENT BUSH: Yes.
Q -- and the sending of a U.S. envoy to the Middle East.
PRESIDENT BUSH: Right. In the spirit of the last question, we'll do what it takes to get a peace. And the conference -- what the Prime Minister and I discussed last night is, do not we have an obligation to develop a strategy? And the answer is, absolutely, we have an obligation. And one way to do that is to include the Quartet to bring nations together and say, here's what it takes to help the Palestinians develop a state that is truly free. And I'm all for conferences, just so long as the conferences produce something. And we had a long discussion about whether or not a conference could produce a viable strategy that we could then use as a go-by for our own obligations, as well as the obligations for the Palestinians for them to have their own state. And the answer is, if that conference will do that, you bet I'm a big supporter.
But one thing is for certain: We are going to develop a strategy, so that once the elections are over, we'll be able to say, here's how we will help you. If you want to be helped, here's what we're willing to do. If you choose not to be helped, if you decide you don't want a free, democratic society, there's nothing we can do. If you think you can have peace without democracy -- again -- I think you'll find that -- I can only speak for myself, that I will be extremely doubtful that it will ever happen. I've seen it work too many times -- tried too many times.
Now, there's going to be people around who say, the Palestinians can't develop a democracy; it's impossible for them to live in a free society. I strongly disagree with that. And so the whole premise of this strategy that we'll outline is all based toward that vision of a free and truly democratic society emerging.
See, what's going to happen is when that happens, there will be great trust developed between Israel and the Palestinian people. Free societies are able -- societies able to develop trust between each other, and there's clearly a lack of trust right now. And so, yeah, I mean, we will do that what it takes to put a strategy in place and advance it, and call upon other nations to develop -- to work with us.
PRIME MINISTER BLAIR: Yes, that's absolutely right. I mean, what we will do is anything that is necessary to make the strategy work. The important thing is that, first of all, there's got to be an agreement as to what a viable Palestinian state means. And what we're really saying this morning is that that viable state has to be a democratic state.
The second thing is, how do we get there, how do we enable the Palestinians to get there? We will do whatever it takes to help build support for that concept, to work through the details of it and make sure that it can actually be brought into being. But the bottom line has got to be that if you want to secure Israel, and you want a viable Palestinian state, those are two states living side-by-side, and they are democratic states living side-by-side. And we've got the chance over the next few months with the election of a new Palestinian President to put the first marker down on that.
Trevor.
Q Mr. President, I know that Iran, as well as Iraq, has been a very significant part of the agenda for this week, and I'd like to ask you whether, in light of the nuclear ambitions of Iran, whether America would tolerate a nuclear Iran? And if the answer to that is, no, would Britain, Mr. Prime Minister, stand as full-square behind America on this issue, as it has done on Iraq?
PRESIDENT BUSH: Let me make sure I understand your question. You're saying a -- Iran with a nuclear weapon --
Q Nuclear power.
PRESIDENT BUSH: Nuclear power or nuclear weapon?
Q Nuclear weapon.
PRESIDENT BUSH: Okay. No, we don't want Iran to have a nuclear weapon, and we're working toward that end. And the truth of the matter is, the Prime Minister gets a lot of credit for working with France and Germany to convince the Iranians to get rid of the processes that would enable them to develop a nuclear weapon.
MR. PRIME MINISTER: Absolutely. And there's an agreement in the international community to make sure that Iran comes into compliance with its international obligations. And we've been working with France and Germany, with -- obviously, with the United States and others, too, to make sure that that happens.
PRESIDENT BUSH: Let's see here. Cochran. John?
Q I'm totally shocked. (Laughter.)
PRESIDENT BUSH: That's why I called on you. (Laughter.)
Q You know, you talk about democracy being so necessary. There are those who would say there is sometimes a harsh peace of a dictator. What if the Palestinian state comes up with somebody who is not a democrat, but is willing to have peace with the Israelis? And let me transfer that to the Iraqis, as well. What if the Iraqis come up with somebody who's not friendly to the United States, is not a democrat, but it's peaceful, is this something you can live with?
PRESIDENT BUSH: Well, first of all, if there's an election, the Iraqis will have come up with somebody who is duly-elected. In other words, democracy will have spoken. And that person is going to have to listen to the people, not to the whims of a dictator, not to their own desires -- personal desires. The great thing about democracy is you actually go out and ask the people for a vote, as you might have noticed recently. And the people get to decide, and they get to decide the course of their future. And so it's a contradiction in terms to say a dictator gets elected. The person who gets elected is chosen by the people. And so I don't -- I'm not --
Q You can be elected and be a tyrant.
PRESIDENT BUSH: Well, you can be elected and then be a strong man, and then you get voted out, so long as you end up honoring democracy. But if you're true to democracy, you'll listen to the people, not to your own desires. If you're true to democracy, you'll do what the people want you to do. That's the difference between democracy and a tyrant.
And the Palestinians may decide to elect a real strong personality. But we'll hold their feet to the fire to make sure that democracy prevails, that there are free elections. And if they don't -- the people of the Palestinian Territory don't like the way this person is responding to their needs, they will vote him or her out.
And the reason why I'm so strong on democracy is democracies don't go to war with each other. And the reason why is the people of most societies don't like war, and they understand what war means. And one of these days the people of the Palestinian -- the Palestinians will realize that there is a bright future because freedom is taking hold -- a future that enables their children to get educated; a future in which they can start their businesses; a future in which they're certain that the money that's going into the treasury of their government is being spent fairly, in a transparent way; a future in which corruption is not the norm; a future in which rule of law prevails. And that leads to a peaceful society.
I've got great faith in democracies to promote peace. And that's why I'm such a strong believer that the way forward in the Middle East, the broader Middle East, is to promote democracy. I readily concede there are skeptics, people who say democracy is not possible in certain societies. But, remember, that was said right after World War II with Japan. And today one of the people that I work closest with is my friend, Prime Minister Koizumi. And it's a -- it's remarkable to me that we sit down at the same table, talking about keeping the peace in places like North Korea, and it really wasn't all that long ago in the march of history that we were enemies.
The Prime Minister knows Koizumi. He's a good man. And he's an ally because democracy took hold in Japan. And yet there was a lot of skeptics. When you look at the writings right after World War II a lot of people said, you're wasting your time to try to promote democracy in Japan. There were some, I suspect maybe in Great Britain and I know in America, that were writing, you're wasting your time to promote democracy in Germany, after World War II. And yet, fortunately, people who preceded us had great faith in liberty to transform societies. And that's what we're talking about is taking place.
And it's hard and it's difficult, particularly in a society like Iraq, because the terrorists understand the stakes of freedom. And they're willing to kill people in brutal fashion to stop it. And I believe we have a duty and an obligation to work to make sure democracy takes told. It's a duty to our own country. It's a duty to generations of Americans and children of Great Britain to help secure the peace by promoting democratic societies.
PRIME MINISTER BLAIR: First of all, I should say, Koizumi is a good man not just because I know him, but -- (laughter) -- although that helps a lot, I think. (Laughter.)
But I think the President said something here that I really think is very, very important. In the politics -- when I was first a member of Parliament and making my way up the greasy pole and all the rest of it, there was a view in foreign policy that you dealt with countries on the basis of whatever attitude they had towards you, but really whatever they did within their own countries, that was up to them, and didn't really make a difference to your long-term relationship.
I think what we are learning today is that there is not stability of any true, long-term kind without democratic rights for free people to decide their government. Now, that doesn't mean to say we try and interfere with every state around the world, but it does mean that there's been a shift, and I think a shift quite dramatically, since 9/11 in the thinking that is informing our view of how we make progress.
That's why it wasn't enough to go into Afghanistan and rout out al Qaeda or knock down the Taliban. We actually had to go there and say, no, we must replace that with a democratic form of government -- because, in the end, if we replace it simply with another dictator, then we'll get the same instability back. That's why in Iraq we decided when Saddam was removed, we didn't want another hard man coming in, another dictator.
Now, it's a struggle, because democracy is hard to bring into countries that have never had it before. But I've no doubt at all that the Iraqi people, given the chance -- and indeed, you can see this in some of the local elections now down in the south of Iraq -- given the chance, they'll want to elect their leaders. Why wouldn't they? I mean, why would they want a strong-arm leader who's going to have the secret police, no freedom of speech, no free press, no human rights, no proper law courts? The people want the freedom. What we recognized, I think, today, is that we're not going to have our security unless they get that freedom.
So when we come to the issue of Israel and Palestine, I think what we are saying is, we are going to work flat-out to deliver this. But people have to understand, we can't deliver something unless the people who it affects actually want it to happen. And we don't believe there will be a viable future for a state of Palestine unless it's based on certain key democratic principles.
Now, I think that's a tremendous thing. And I also think that in the end -- of course, you're right, people can vote for the people they'd like to vote for in elections, right? That's what democracy is about. I think we've got to have some faith, though, in the ability of ordinary people, decent people, to decide their own future. Because it's a curious thing, you look at all these Eastern European countries -- Central East European countries in the European Union now, just democracies over the last 10 years -- fierce election debates, change in the government, often difficult circumstances when the governments change. But you go to those countries and talk to the people there, and their sense of liberation and their sense of self-worth as a result of the freedom they have, that is the best testament to why it's sensible to have faith in democracy.
And sometimes when people say, well it's -- you've got a Republican President, and a progressive politician from across the water, but in my view, people from different sides of the political spectrum should be able to come together to argue that policy case, because democracy is something that should unite us, whatever political position we have.
David.
Q Mr. President, first. The Prime Minister is sometimes, perhaps unfairly, characterized in Britain as your "poodle." I was wondering if that's the way you may see your relationship? And perhaps, more seriously, do you feel for the --
PRIME MINISTER BLAIR: Don't answer "yes" to that question. If you do, I would be -- (laughter.) That would be difficult.
Q Do you feel, for the strong support that Britain has given you over Iraq, that you have to pay back Britain for that support in some way?
PRESIDENT BUSH: The Prime Minister made the decision he did because he wanted to do his duty to secure the people of Great Britain. That's why he made the decision. Plenty capable of making his own mind. He's a strong, capable man. I admire him a lot. You know why? When he tells you something, he means it. You spend much time with politics, you'll know there's some people around this part of the -- this kind of line of work where they tell you something, they don't mean it. When he says something, he means it. He's a big thinker. He's got a clear vision. And when times get tough, he doesn't wilt. When they -- when the criticism starts to come his way -- I suspect that might be happening on occasion -- he stands what he believes in. That's the kind of person I like to deal with. He is a -- I'm a lucky person, a lucky President, to be holding office at the same time this man holds the Prime Ministership.
These are troubled times. It's a tough world. What this world needs is steady, rock-solid leaders who stand on principle. And that's what the Prime Minister means to me.
PRIME MINISTER BLAIR: I just want to add one thing, which is that, well, this -- this concept of payback -- we are -- we're not fighting the war against terrorism because we are an ally of the United States. We are an ally of the United States because we believe in fighting this war against terrorism. We share the same objectives; we share the same values. And if we look back over our own history in the last half-century or more, we, both of us, in different ways, the United States and Britain, have a cause to be thankful for this alliance and this partnership. And I should we -- I believe we should be thankful that it is as strong as it is today. And as long as I remain Prime Minister of our country, it will carry on being strong -- not because that's in the interests of America, simply, or in the interests of the international community, but because I believe passionately it is in the interests of Britain.
PRESIDENT BUSH: Good job. Thank you, sir.
Thank you all.
President and Prime Minister Blair Discuss Iraq, Middle East
The East Room
PRESIDENT BUSH: Thank you. Welcome. I'm pleased to welcome a statesman and a friend back to the White House. Prime Minister Blair is a visionary leader. I've come to know him as a man of unshakeable convictions. America's alliance with Great Britain has never been stronger, and we're working closely every day to spread that freedom that leads to peace.
Our two nations have shared in some of the most hopeful and positive achievements of our time. The people of Afghanistan have now chosen their President, in a free election. The Taliban and the terrorists did everything they could to intimidate the long-suffering people of that country. Yet men and women lined up at the polls, some of them waiting for hours to have their first taste of democracy.
The success of Afghanistan's election is a standing rebuke to cynicism and extremism, and a testimony to the power of liberty and hope. The people of the United States and Great Britain can be proud of the role we have played in aiding the rise of a free nation, and in so doing, making our countries more secure.
Together we're serving the same cause in Iraq. Prime Minister Allawi authorized military operations to rid Fallujah of Saddam holdouts and foreign terrorists, and American and Iraqi forces have made substantial progress in the last several days. Our coalition is training Iraqi security forces who are performing bravely, and taking increasing responsibility for their country's security. British, American and other coalition forces are helping provide stability that is necessary for free elections. And U.N. officials are helping the Iraqi people prepare for those elections, to be held in January.
As those elections draw near, the desperation of the killers will grow, and the violence could escalate. The success of democracy in Iraq will be a crushing blow to the forces of terror, and the terrorists know it. The defeat of terror in Iraq will set that nation on a course to lasting freedom and will give hope to millions, and the Iraqi people know it.
The United States and Great Britain have shown our determination to help Iraqis achieve their liberty and to defend the security of the world. We'll continue to stand with our friends, and we will finish the job.
Prime Minister Blair and I also share a vision of a free, peaceful, a democratic broader Middle East. That vision must include a just and peaceful resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict based on two democratic states -- Israel and Palestine -- living side-by-side in peace and security.
Our sympathies are with the Palestinian people as they begin a period of mourning. Yet the months ahead offer a new opportunity to make progress toward a lasting peace. Soon Palestinians will choose a new President. This is the first step in creating lasting democratic political institutions through which a free Palestinian people will elect local and national leaders.
We're committed to the success of these elections, and we stand ready to help. We look forward to working with a Palestinian leadership that is committed to fighting terror and committed to the cause of democratic reform. We'll mobilize the international community to help revive the Palestinian economy, to build up Palestinian security institutions to fight terror, to help the Palestinian government fight corruption, and to reform the Palestinian political system and build democratic institutions.
We'll also work with Israeli and Palestinian leaders to complete the disengagement plan from Gaza and part of the West Bank. These steps, if successful, will lay the foundation for progress in implementing the road map, and then lead to final status negotiations.
We seek a democratic, independent and viable state for the Palestinian people. We are committed to the security of Israel as a Jewish state. These objectives -- two states living side-by-side in peace and security -- can be reached by only one path: the path of democracy, reform, and the rule of law.
All that we hope to achieve together requires that America and Europe remain close partners. We are the pillars of the free world. We face the same threats and share the same belief in freedom and the rights of every individual. In my second term, I will work to deepen our transatlantic ties with the nations of Europe. I intend to visit Europe as soon as possible after my inauguration. My government will continue to work through the NATO Alliance and with the European Union to strengthen cooperation between Europe and America.
America applauds the success of NATO and EU enlargement, and welcomes the stability and prosperity that that enlargement brings. We must apply the combined strength and moral purpose of Europe and America to effectively fight terror, and to overcome poverty and disease and despair, to advance human dignity, and to advance freedom.
In all that lies ahead in the defense of freedom, in the advance of democracy, and the spread of prosperity, America, the United Kingdom, and all of Europe must act together.
Mr. Prime Minister, welcome.
PRIME MINISTER BLAIR: Thank you, Mr. President, and thank you for your gracious welcome to me here in the White House. And once again, many congratulations on your reelection.
There are three major issues that arise. The United States and the United Kingdom have stood together since September the 11th, 2001, in order to combat this new form of global terrorism that we face. And the three things that we can do most to make sure that we defeat this terrorism, apart from being ever vigilant on security, but, first of all, to bring democracy to Afghanistan, which we are doing, as the successful election of President Karzai shows. And that is quite magnificent tribute not just to the courage of the Afghan people, but actually, also to the power of democracy.
Secondly, we have to complete our mission in Iraq, make sure that Iraq is a stable and a democratic country. And I have no doubt at all that whatever the difficulties the terrorists and insurgents, supporters of Saddam Hussein may pose for us, that we will overcome those difficulties -- ourselves, the multinational force, together with the Iraqi government -- and ensure that Iraq can be that democratic, stable state that the vast majority of Iraqis, I know, will want to see.
And the third thing is, as the President rightly said a moment or two ago, we meet at a crucial time where it is important that we revitalize and reinvigorate the search for a genuine, lasting and just peace in the Middle East. I would like to repeat my condolences to the Palestinian people at this time.
As you will have seen, we have set out the steps that we believe are necessary to get into a process that will lead to the two-state solution that we want to see. And I think those steps are very clear. They are, first of all, making sure that we set out a clear vision -- that clear vision was articulated by President Bush some time ago, repeated by him today -- of a two-state solution, two democratic states living side-by-side together in peace.
The second thing is, we need to support those Palestinian elections. That is a chance for the first beginnings of democracy to take hold on the Palestinian side. So it's important that we support it. Thirdly, however, if we want a viable Palestinian state, we need to make sure that the political, the economic, and the security infrastructure of that state is shaped and helped to come into being. We will mobilize international opinion and the international community in order to do that.
The fourth thing is that Prime Minister Sharon's plan for disengagement is important. I think we recognized that when we were here at the White House back in April of this year. That disengagement plan is now going forward. It's important that we support it. And then, on the basis of this, we are able, in accordance with the principles of the road map, to get back into final status negotiation, so that we have that two-state solution. And I think there is every possibility that we can do this, with the energy and the will and the recognition that, in the end, it is only if the two states that we want to see living side-by-side are indeed democratic states where the rule of law and human rights are respected in each of them, that a just in peace could be secured.
I would also like to support very strongly what the President has just said about the transatlantic alliance. Again, I think there is a tremendous desire and willingness on the part of, certainly, our partners in the European Union, to make sure that that alliance is strong. It's necessary for the security of the world. It's necessary for us to be able to tackle many of the problems that confront us.
I look forward to working with the President over these coming months in order to try and secure that progress that we have laid out for you today, and also, of course, we have the opportunity to discuss the upcoming G8 presidency of the United Kingdom. And we intend to take those issues forward, as well.
So, Mr. President, once again, many, many thanks.
PRESIDENT BUSH: Sure.
PRIME MINISTER BLAIR: Thank you for your alliance and for your leadership at this time.
PRESIDENT BUSH: Welcome, thanks.
Terry.
Q Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you. With Yasser Arafat's death, what specific steps can Israel take to revive peace negotiations? And do you believe that Israel should implement a freeze on West Bank settlement expansion?
PRESIDENT BUSH: I believe that the responsibility for peace is going to rest with the Palestinian people's desire to build a democracy and Israel's willingness to help them build a democracy. I know we have a responsibility as free nations to set forth a strategy that will help the Palestinian people head toward democracy. I don't think there will ever be lasting peace until there is a free, truly democratic society in the Palestinian territories that becomes a state. And therefore, the responsibility rests with both the Palestinian people and the leadership which emerges, with the Israelis to help that democracy grow, and with the free world to put the strategy in place that will help the democracy grow.
PRIME MINISTER BLAIR: James.
Q Mr. President, can you say today that it is your firm intention that by the end of your second term in office, it is your goal that there should be two states -- Israel and Palestine -- living side-by-side?
PRESIDENT BUSH: I think it is fair to say that I believe we've got a great chance to establish a Palestinian state, and I intend to use the next four years to spend the capital of the United States on such a state. I believe it is in the interest of the world that a truly free state develop. I know it is in the interest of the Palestinian people that they can live in a society where they can express their opinion freely, a society where they can educate their children without hate, a society in which they can realize their dreams if they happen to be an entrepreneur. I know it's in Israel's interest that a free state evolve on her border. There's no other way to have a lasting peace, in my judgment, unless we all work to help develop the institutions necessary for a state to emerge: civil society, based upon justice, free speech, free elections, the right for people to express themselves freely. The first step of that is going to be the election of a new president, and my fervent hope is that the president embraces the notion of a democratic state.
I hate to put artificial time frames on things; unfortunately I've got one on my existence as President. It's not artificial, it's actually real. And I'd like to see it done in four years. I think it is possible. I think it is possible.
I think it is impossible to think that the President of the United States, or the Prime Minister of Great Britain can impose our vision. I think it's unrealistic to say, well, Bush wants it done, or Blair wants it done, therefore, it will happen. But I think it is very possible that it can happen, because I believe people want to live in a free society. And our job is to help it happen.
Thank you. Steve.
Q Thank you, Mr. President. Prime Minister Blair wants a international conference on the Middle East. What has to happen before you would sign on to that? And will you name a U.S. envoy? And what would you like to accomplish on this Europe trip that you're planning?
PRESIDENT BUSH: Let's see here. (Laughter.) I'll start with the -- accomplishing on the Europe trip. It is to remind people that the world is better off, America is better off, Europe is better off when we work together. And there's a lot we can accomplish working together. There's a lot we have accomplished working together.
We're working very closely to find al Qaeda and bring members of al Qaeda to justice. We've worked closely to free Afghanistan. We're working closely to interdict the flow of weapons of mass destruction. The Proliferation Security Initiative is based -- the membership of which is a lot of members of the EU. I mean, there's a lot of things we're working together on. NATO expansion we worked together on. It was such a refreshing moment when the new leaders of -- the leaders of the new countries in NATO walked in the room, in the Czech Republic. It was a fantastic moment to see these proud members walk in and say, we're now a member of the greatest alliance ever. And there's a lot we can continue to do.
First two questions?
Q Prime Minister Blair's idea about an international conference --
PRESIDENT BUSH: Yes.
Q -- and the sending of a U.S. envoy to the Middle East.
PRESIDENT BUSH: Right. In the spirit of the last question, we'll do what it takes to get a peace. And the conference -- what the Prime Minister and I discussed last night is, do not we have an obligation to develop a strategy? And the answer is, absolutely, we have an obligation. And one way to do that is to include the Quartet to bring nations together and say, here's what it takes to help the Palestinians develop a state that is truly free. And I'm all for conferences, just so long as the conferences produce something. And we had a long discussion about whether or not a conference could produce a viable strategy that we could then use as a go-by for our own obligations, as well as the obligations for the Palestinians for them to have their own state. And the answer is, if that conference will do that, you bet I'm a big supporter.
But one thing is for certain: We are going to develop a strategy, so that once the elections are over, we'll be able to say, here's how we will help you. If you want to be helped, here's what we're willing to do. If you choose not to be helped, if you decide you don't want a free, democratic society, there's nothing we can do. If you think you can have peace without democracy -- again -- I think you'll find that -- I can only speak for myself, that I will be extremely doubtful that it will ever happen. I've seen it work too many times -- tried too many times.
Now, there's going to be people around who say, the Palestinians can't develop a democracy; it's impossible for them to live in a free society. I strongly disagree with that. And so the whole premise of this strategy that we'll outline is all based toward that vision of a free and truly democratic society emerging.
See, what's going to happen is when that happens, there will be great trust developed between Israel and the Palestinian people. Free societies are able -- societies able to develop trust between each other, and there's clearly a lack of trust right now. And so, yeah, I mean, we will do that what it takes to put a strategy in place and advance it, and call upon other nations to develop -- to work with us.
PRIME MINISTER BLAIR: Yes, that's absolutely right. I mean, what we will do is anything that is necessary to make the strategy work. The important thing is that, first of all, there's got to be an agreement as to what a viable Palestinian state means. And what we're really saying this morning is that that viable state has to be a democratic state.
The second thing is, how do we get there, how do we enable the Palestinians to get there? We will do whatever it takes to help build support for that concept, to work through the details of it and make sure that it can actually be brought into being. But the bottom line has got to be that if you want to secure Israel, and you want a viable Palestinian state, those are two states living side-by-side, and they are democratic states living side-by-side. And we've got the chance over the next few months with the election of a new Palestinian President to put the first marker down on that.
Trevor.
Q Mr. President, I know that Iran, as well as Iraq, has been a very significant part of the agenda for this week, and I'd like to ask you whether, in light of the nuclear ambitions of Iran, whether America would tolerate a nuclear Iran? And if the answer to that is, no, would Britain, Mr. Prime Minister, stand as full-square behind America on this issue, as it has done on Iraq?
PRESIDENT BUSH: Let me make sure I understand your question. You're saying a -- Iran with a nuclear weapon --
Q Nuclear power.
PRESIDENT BUSH: Nuclear power or nuclear weapon?
Q Nuclear weapon.
PRESIDENT BUSH: Okay. No, we don't want Iran to have a nuclear weapon, and we're working toward that end. And the truth of the matter is, the Prime Minister gets a lot of credit for working with France and Germany to convince the Iranians to get rid of the processes that would enable them to develop a nuclear weapon.
MR. PRIME MINISTER: Absolutely. And there's an agreement in the international community to make sure that Iran comes into compliance with its international obligations. And we've been working with France and Germany, with -- obviously, with the United States and others, too, to make sure that that happens.
PRESIDENT BUSH: Let's see here. Cochran. John?
Q I'm totally shocked. (Laughter.)
PRESIDENT BUSH: That's why I called on you. (Laughter.)
Q You know, you talk about democracy being so necessary. There are those who would say there is sometimes a harsh peace of a dictator. What if the Palestinian state comes up with somebody who is not a democrat, but is willing to have peace with the Israelis? And let me transfer that to the Iraqis, as well. What if the Iraqis come up with somebody who's not friendly to the United States, is not a democrat, but it's peaceful, is this something you can live with?
PRESIDENT BUSH: Well, first of all, if there's an election, the Iraqis will have come up with somebody who is duly-elected. In other words, democracy will have spoken. And that person is going to have to listen to the people, not to the whims of a dictator, not to their own desires -- personal desires. The great thing about democracy is you actually go out and ask the people for a vote, as you might have noticed recently. And the people get to decide, and they get to decide the course of their future. And so it's a contradiction in terms to say a dictator gets elected. The person who gets elected is chosen by the people. And so I don't -- I'm not --
Q You can be elected and be a tyrant.
PRESIDENT BUSH: Well, you can be elected and then be a strong man, and then you get voted out, so long as you end up honoring democracy. But if you're true to democracy, you'll listen to the people, not to your own desires. If you're true to democracy, you'll do what the people want you to do. That's the difference between democracy and a tyrant.
And the Palestinians may decide to elect a real strong personality. But we'll hold their feet to the fire to make sure that democracy prevails, that there are free elections. And if they don't -- the people of the Palestinian Territory don't like the way this person is responding to their needs, they will vote him or her out.
And the reason why I'm so strong on democracy is democracies don't go to war with each other. And the reason why is the people of most societies don't like war, and they understand what war means. And one of these days the people of the Palestinian -- the Palestinians will realize that there is a bright future because freedom is taking hold -- a future that enables their children to get educated; a future in which they can start their businesses; a future in which they're certain that the money that's going into the treasury of their government is being spent fairly, in a transparent way; a future in which corruption is not the norm; a future in which rule of law prevails. And that leads to a peaceful society.
I've got great faith in democracies to promote peace. And that's why I'm such a strong believer that the way forward in the Middle East, the broader Middle East, is to promote democracy. I readily concede there are skeptics, people who say democracy is not possible in certain societies. But, remember, that was said right after World War II with Japan. And today one of the people that I work closest with is my friend, Prime Minister Koizumi. And it's a -- it's remarkable to me that we sit down at the same table, talking about keeping the peace in places like North Korea, and it really wasn't all that long ago in the march of history that we were enemies.
The Prime Minister knows Koizumi. He's a good man. And he's an ally because democracy took hold in Japan. And yet there was a lot of skeptics. When you look at the writings right after World War II a lot of people said, you're wasting your time to try to promote democracy in Japan. There were some, I suspect maybe in Great Britain and I know in America, that were writing, you're wasting your time to promote democracy in Germany, after World War II. And yet, fortunately, people who preceded us had great faith in liberty to transform societies. And that's what we're talking about is taking place.
And it's hard and it's difficult, particularly in a society like Iraq, because the terrorists understand the stakes of freedom. And they're willing to kill people in brutal fashion to stop it. And I believe we have a duty and an obligation to work to make sure democracy takes told. It's a duty to our own country. It's a duty to generations of Americans and children of Great Britain to help secure the peace by promoting democratic societies.
PRIME MINISTER BLAIR: First of all, I should say, Koizumi is a good man not just because I know him, but -- (laughter) -- although that helps a lot, I think. (Laughter.)
But I think the President said something here that I really think is very, very important. In the politics -- when I was first a member of Parliament and making my way up the greasy pole and all the rest of it, there was a view in foreign policy that you dealt with countries on the basis of whatever attitude they had towards you, but really whatever they did within their own countries, that was up to them, and didn't really make a difference to your long-term relationship.
I think what we are learning today is that there is not stability of any true, long-term kind without democratic rights for free people to decide their government. Now, that doesn't mean to say we try and interfere with every state around the world, but it does mean that there's been a shift, and I think a shift quite dramatically, since 9/11 in the thinking that is informing our view of how we make progress.
That's why it wasn't enough to go into Afghanistan and rout out al Qaeda or knock down the Taliban. We actually had to go there and say, no, we must replace that with a democratic form of government -- because, in the end, if we replace it simply with another dictator, then we'll get the same instability back. That's why in Iraq we decided when Saddam was removed, we didn't want another hard man coming in, another dictator.
Now, it's a struggle, because democracy is hard to bring into countries that have never had it before. But I've no doubt at all that the Iraqi people, given the chance -- and indeed, you can see this in some of the local elections now down in the south of Iraq -- given the chance, they'll want to elect their leaders. Why wouldn't they? I mean, why would they want a strong-arm leader who's going to have the secret police, no freedom of speech, no free press, no human rights, no proper law courts? The people want the freedom. What we recognized, I think, today, is that we're not going to have our security unless they get that freedom.
So when we come to the issue of Israel and Palestine, I think what we are saying is, we are going to work flat-out to deliver this. But people have to understand, we can't deliver something unless the people who it affects actually want it to happen. And we don't believe there will be a viable future for a state of Palestine unless it's based on certain key democratic principles.
Now, I think that's a tremendous thing. And I also think that in the end -- of course, you're right, people can vote for the people they'd like to vote for in elections, right? That's what democracy is about. I think we've got to have some faith, though, in the ability of ordinary people, decent people, to decide their own future. Because it's a curious thing, you look at all these Eastern European countries -- Central East European countries in the European Union now, just democracies over the last 10 years -- fierce election debates, change in the government, often difficult circumstances when the governments change. But you go to those countries and talk to the people there, and their sense of liberation and their sense of self-worth as a result of the freedom they have, that is the best testament to why it's sensible to have faith in democracy.
And sometimes when people say, well it's -- you've got a Republican President, and a progressive politician from across the water, but in my view, people from different sides of the political spectrum should be able to come together to argue that policy case, because democracy is something that should unite us, whatever political position we have.
David.
Q Mr. President, first. The Prime Minister is sometimes, perhaps unfairly, characterized in Britain as your "poodle." I was wondering if that's the way you may see your relationship? And perhaps, more seriously, do you feel for the --
PRIME MINISTER BLAIR: Don't answer "yes" to that question. If you do, I would be -- (laughter.) That would be difficult.
Q Do you feel, for the strong support that Britain has given you over Iraq, that you have to pay back Britain for that support in some way?
PRESIDENT BUSH: The Prime Minister made the decision he did because he wanted to do his duty to secure the people of Great Britain. That's why he made the decision. Plenty capable of making his own mind. He's a strong, capable man. I admire him a lot. You know why? When he tells you something, he means it. You spend much time with politics, you'll know there's some people around this part of the -- this kind of line of work where they tell you something, they don't mean it. When he says something, he means it. He's a big thinker. He's got a clear vision. And when times get tough, he doesn't wilt. When they -- when the criticism starts to come his way -- I suspect that might be happening on occasion -- he stands what he believes in. That's the kind of person I like to deal with. He is a -- I'm a lucky person, a lucky President, to be holding office at the same time this man holds the Prime Ministership.
These are troubled times. It's a tough world. What this world needs is steady, rock-solid leaders who stand on principle. And that's what the Prime Minister means to me.
PRIME MINISTER BLAIR: I just want to add one thing, which is that, well, this -- this concept of payback -- we are -- we're not fighting the war against terrorism because we are an ally of the United States. We are an ally of the United States because we believe in fighting this war against terrorism. We share the same objectives; we share the same values. And if we look back over our own history in the last half-century or more, we, both of us, in different ways, the United States and Britain, have a cause to be thankful for this alliance and this partnership. And I should we -- I believe we should be thankful that it is as strong as it is today. And as long as I remain Prime Minister of our country, it will carry on being strong -- not because that's in the interests of America, simply, or in the interests of the international community, but because I believe passionately it is in the interests of Britain.
PRESIDENT BUSH: Good job. Thank you, sir.
Thank you all.
Friday, November 12, 2004
The Road From Here
By ABDULLAH II
Published: November 12, 2004
Amman, Jordan
From time to time, history holds moments of great potential, when we can look forward with hope even as we experience crisis and uncertainty. In the Arab-Israeli conflict, just such a moment may be here. With the sad passing of Yasir Arafat, Palestinians have lost a leader who kept their hope of independence alive for more than half a century. Now, an opportunity exists to honor the best of that legacy, in a new drive for progress and peace, in a part of the world that has seen too much bloodshed.
Today the Arab-Israeli conflict remains the world's central challenge. Israelis and Palestinians both need an end to its bitter violence. So do the global millions who suffer the collateral damage: ongoing extremist violence and deep cynicism about international justice.
In 2002, Arab countries took a bold step forward, committing themselves to a two-state solution that includes security guarantees for Israel to live in peace with its neighbors; a sovereign and democratic Palestine; and a process that leads to a comprehensive settlement, addressing the Syrian and Lebanese tracks.
The two-state solution recognizes what I and my late father, King Hussein, have long argued. For lasting peace, Israel must be fully integrated into the entire region, from Morocco to Yemen. But this depends on creating an independent Palestinian state, whose people are, at last, able to live in dignity and hope. Unless this happens, there will be no regionwide acceptance of Israel and no real peace.
In 2003, the parties agreed on the road map to peace. The United States and the eight leading industrialized nations are also on board. But the process has been trapped in an ongoing cycle of violence. Now, events provide fresh opportunities. New Palestinian leadership can carry forward the vision of a viable, independent Palestine by delivering on the reforms that statehood involves: competent governance, investments in public welfare, fighting corruption, tougher security against terrorism and a real partnership at the peace tables.
In Israel, the government can recommit to the road map and move swiftly to withdraw from Gaza and take other confidence-building measures that will refute the charge that its recent policies are intended to sideline the peace process and further divide people. Both sides can now make the compromises that a comprehensive, lasting and just peace requires.
Just as important, with its elections over, the United States can now refocus on this critical issue. The world's most powerful, most visible democracy has a chance to send a strong message to the region's people, especially its youth - a message of deeds, not words. That means fulfilling the promise of a rebuilt, violence-free, democratic and sovereign Iraq. And in the spiritual heart of the region it means leading the peace process and insisting that both sides engage in genuine dialogue and live up to their commitments spelled out in the road map - one that President Bush has said could lead to the creation of a Palestinian state next year.
Americans know how important it is to reach the world's Muslims. In the aftermath of 9/11, American leaders pledged that the war on terror was not a war on Islam. They acknowledged Islam's commitment to peace and recognized the great contributions of the world's 1.2 billion Muslims. They called on people of all faiths to stand together, and called on all nations to join the United States in its fight.
And for good reason. We can't win the war on terror if we don't act together. We Muslims were the first targets of the extremists, whose stated goal is to bring down moderate governments and stop the growth of democratic civil society. My country has played a significant role in the global alliance against terrorism, and more: we have led a regional effort for reform and development to counter the voices of hatred and cynicism. International reports have ranked our country first in the region in educational reform. In the economy, we have encouraged growth and opportunity; in public life, we have emphasized human rights and good governance.
My country's vision is of a modern civil society rooted in Arab-Islamic values. The Koran teaches: "Be just: that is next to piety." As a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be unto Him, I am committed to the struggle for tolerance and progress. I believe Jordan's path shows what a homegrown Arab-Islamic model can accomplish in fostering development, combating extremism and providing new hope.
At the end of the day, the success of regional reform depends on a renewed commitment to peace and progress, supported by a courageous America. That achievement will bring global healing. Perhaps now, in a moment shaped by both loss and hope, the time has come.
Abdullah II is king of Jordan.
By ABDULLAH II
Published: November 12, 2004
Amman, Jordan
From time to time, history holds moments of great potential, when we can look forward with hope even as we experience crisis and uncertainty. In the Arab-Israeli conflict, just such a moment may be here. With the sad passing of Yasir Arafat, Palestinians have lost a leader who kept their hope of independence alive for more than half a century. Now, an opportunity exists to honor the best of that legacy, in a new drive for progress and peace, in a part of the world that has seen too much bloodshed.
Today the Arab-Israeli conflict remains the world's central challenge. Israelis and Palestinians both need an end to its bitter violence. So do the global millions who suffer the collateral damage: ongoing extremist violence and deep cynicism about international justice.
In 2002, Arab countries took a bold step forward, committing themselves to a two-state solution that includes security guarantees for Israel to live in peace with its neighbors; a sovereign and democratic Palestine; and a process that leads to a comprehensive settlement, addressing the Syrian and Lebanese tracks.
The two-state solution recognizes what I and my late father, King Hussein, have long argued. For lasting peace, Israel must be fully integrated into the entire region, from Morocco to Yemen. But this depends on creating an independent Palestinian state, whose people are, at last, able to live in dignity and hope. Unless this happens, there will be no regionwide acceptance of Israel and no real peace.
In 2003, the parties agreed on the road map to peace. The United States and the eight leading industrialized nations are also on board. But the process has been trapped in an ongoing cycle of violence. Now, events provide fresh opportunities. New Palestinian leadership can carry forward the vision of a viable, independent Palestine by delivering on the reforms that statehood involves: competent governance, investments in public welfare, fighting corruption, tougher security against terrorism and a real partnership at the peace tables.
In Israel, the government can recommit to the road map and move swiftly to withdraw from Gaza and take other confidence-building measures that will refute the charge that its recent policies are intended to sideline the peace process and further divide people. Both sides can now make the compromises that a comprehensive, lasting and just peace requires.
Just as important, with its elections over, the United States can now refocus on this critical issue. The world's most powerful, most visible democracy has a chance to send a strong message to the region's people, especially its youth - a message of deeds, not words. That means fulfilling the promise of a rebuilt, violence-free, democratic and sovereign Iraq. And in the spiritual heart of the region it means leading the peace process and insisting that both sides engage in genuine dialogue and live up to their commitments spelled out in the road map - one that President Bush has said could lead to the creation of a Palestinian state next year.
Americans know how important it is to reach the world's Muslims. In the aftermath of 9/11, American leaders pledged that the war on terror was not a war on Islam. They acknowledged Islam's commitment to peace and recognized the great contributions of the world's 1.2 billion Muslims. They called on people of all faiths to stand together, and called on all nations to join the United States in its fight.
And for good reason. We can't win the war on terror if we don't act together. We Muslims were the first targets of the extremists, whose stated goal is to bring down moderate governments and stop the growth of democratic civil society. My country has played a significant role in the global alliance against terrorism, and more: we have led a regional effort for reform and development to counter the voices of hatred and cynicism. International reports have ranked our country first in the region in educational reform. In the economy, we have encouraged growth and opportunity; in public life, we have emphasized human rights and good governance.
My country's vision is of a modern civil society rooted in Arab-Islamic values. The Koran teaches: "Be just: that is next to piety." As a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be unto Him, I am committed to the struggle for tolerance and progress. I believe Jordan's path shows what a homegrown Arab-Islamic model can accomplish in fostering development, combating extremism and providing new hope.
At the end of the day, the success of regional reform depends on a renewed commitment to peace and progress, supported by a courageous America. That achievement will bring global healing. Perhaps now, in a moment shaped by both loss and hope, the time has come.
Abdullah II is king of Jordan.
Thursday, November 11, 2004
The Killers
The Dutch hit crisis point.
Mohammed B., the man accused of killing Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam last week, was born and bred in the Netherlands, "known as a relaxed, friendly and intelligent young man," a good student, a volunteer social worker, and a serious student of Information Technology. He came from a close family, and the death of his mother three years ago hit him very hard. He began to devote more time to religious studies, and in the last year became increasingly fanatic. He abandoned his social work because he refused to serve alcohol, and because the foundation where he volunteered organized events where both sexes were present. He was on welfare when he killed van Gogh.
We have seen this sort before; Mohammed B. is the Dutch-Moroccan version of the British-Pakistani killer of Daniel Pearl. Both came from good families that had to all appearances successfully assimilated into Western society. Both were well educated and upwardly mobile. Both had money and opportunity. Neither suffered unusual discrimination. Both lived in politically correct, meticulously tolerant societies that permitted no intrusion on their private lives. There was no apparent reason, either psychological or sociological, why either should have become a killer. Yet each freely chose — freely chose — to become a terrorist.
Each also chose to perform a ritual murder. Both beheaded (or, in the van Gogh killing, all-but-beheaded) their victims. This has long been a trademark of radical Islamist terrorists, whose videos of beheadings were used recruit new jihadists to their ranks long before they were broadcast around the world. The recruits join the jihad precisely because they want to behead the infidels and crusaders who are the objects of their hatred. Mohammed B. added a macabre twist: he left a message of hatred for Jews, Christians, Europeans and Americans impaled to van Gogh's chest with the murder weapon, a bloody dagger.
Mohammed B. was no lone wolf; within a few days, Dutch police had arrested seven other members of what they claimed was a terrorist group, and Spanish authorities said they believed the order for the ritual murder had come from terrorist leaders in their country. If that is correct, the van Gogh slaughter wasn't merely the result of local circumstances, but rather the product of a continental network of like-minded fanatics.
As the outstanding Italian journalist Magdi Allam sadly noted in the Corriere della Sera a few days after the event, the murder of van Gogh probably marked the end of Europe's multicultural utopian dream, because it forces politically correct Europeans to face an identity crisis that is eerily symmetrical with the same sort of crisis that has been afflicting Muslims for the past 30 years. Both were provoked by Western victories: The humiliation of Arab armies by Israel in 1967, and the defeat and dissolution of the Soviet Empire.
The Six-Day War and the ensuing collapse of the dream of a pan-Arab empire catalyzed a resurgence of fundamentalist Islam and its intense intolerance of social, religious and political freedoms. In Allam's neat formulation, al Qaeda represents the privatization and globalization of Islamic terrorism in its crudest and most hateful form. Yet it appeals to many Muslims, including some living and even born in the West, because they find it spiritually fulfilling, and also because there is no spiritual force in Europe capable of challenging it.
As things stand, the Europeans are so enthralled by cultural relativism and political correctness that they are totally unwilling to challenge any idea, even the jihadists' program of creating a theocratic state within Western civil society. The terrorist groups consider themselves autonomous, a community of believers opposed to the broader community of unbelievers and apostates.
The killing of Theo van Gogh is a textbook case of what happens when a tolerant but confused society takes political correctness to its illogical extreme. For Mohammed B. did not choose terrorism all by himself. He was indoctrinated and recruited in a mosque where he was pumped full of the Wahabbi doctrine "predominant in Saudi Arabia." The murder of van Gogh was an instant replay of the many murders carried out by Zarqawi and his followers in Iraq, extolled by fanatical Muslim Imams. As Allam reminds us, not all mosques are fundamentalist, extremist, or terrorist, but all the fundamentalists, extremists, and terrorists got that way in mosques.
The Dutch — like every other European society I know — were unwilling to recognize that they had potentially lethal enemies within, and that it was necessary to impose the rules of civil behavior on everyone within their domain. The rules of political correctness made it impossible even to criticize the jihadists, never mind compel them to observe the rules of civil society. Just look at what happened the next day: An artist in Rotterdam improvised a wall fresco that consisted of an angel and the words "Thou Shalt Not Kill." The local imam protested, and local authorities removed the fresco.
That's what happens when a culture is relativized to the point of suicide. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan once remarked of an American politician, "he can no longer distinguish between our friends and our enemies, and so he has ended by adopting our enemies' view of the world." This has now befallen Europe, which cannot distinguish between free societies — their natural friends — like the United States and Israel, and has ended by embracing enemies such as the radical Islamist regimes and elevating Yasser Arafat to near beatific stature.
The process by which the Europeans arrived at this grave impasse has been going on ever since the late 19th century, when the intelligentsia revolted against "bourgeois society" and its values, and sought for deeper meaning in acts of nihilistic violence, in fascism and communism, and in vast wars that engulfed the rest of the world. The Europeans might have confronted their spiritual crisis after the Second World War (some brave souls, like Albert Camus, tried), but the Cold War tamped it down. With a huge enemy on their borders, the Europeans finessed the issue, opted for a soulless materialism (that has given them a nanny state and a birth rate that promises to extinguish them in relatively short order), and pretended that the core of Western civilization was irrelevant to their lives.
When the Cold War ended, the crisis was still there, but they projected it onto us. The United States "needed an enemy," they scoffed, because otherwise we could not define our mission. But they were the ones who had lost their enemy, and thus had to face their own terrible contradictions and moral failures. Now they deride us because of our presumed archaic faith. They even equate American religion with the fundamentalism that now menaces them inside their model cities and threatens their enormously self-satisfied secular utopia.
Holland is now in the grips of violent reaction. Mosques and religious schools are firebombed. Emergency measures have been enacted. The Dutch are groping for a "solution," but they are still ducking the real problem, which, to their consternation, we are dealing with more effectively and far more self-confidently. "The multicultural crisis," Magdi Allam wisely reminds us, "should teach us that only a West with a strong religious, cultural and moral identity can challenge and open itself to the 'others' in a constructive and peaceful way. And that the goal must be a system of shared values within a common identity."
The Dutch hit crisis point.
Mohammed B., the man accused of killing Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam last week, was born and bred in the Netherlands, "known as a relaxed, friendly and intelligent young man," a good student, a volunteer social worker, and a serious student of Information Technology. He came from a close family, and the death of his mother three years ago hit him very hard. He began to devote more time to religious studies, and in the last year became increasingly fanatic. He abandoned his social work because he refused to serve alcohol, and because the foundation where he volunteered organized events where both sexes were present. He was on welfare when he killed van Gogh.
We have seen this sort before; Mohammed B. is the Dutch-Moroccan version of the British-Pakistani killer of Daniel Pearl. Both came from good families that had to all appearances successfully assimilated into Western society. Both were well educated and upwardly mobile. Both had money and opportunity. Neither suffered unusual discrimination. Both lived in politically correct, meticulously tolerant societies that permitted no intrusion on their private lives. There was no apparent reason, either psychological or sociological, why either should have become a killer. Yet each freely chose — freely chose — to become a terrorist.
Each also chose to perform a ritual murder. Both beheaded (or, in the van Gogh killing, all-but-beheaded) their victims. This has long been a trademark of radical Islamist terrorists, whose videos of beheadings were used recruit new jihadists to their ranks long before they were broadcast around the world. The recruits join the jihad precisely because they want to behead the infidels and crusaders who are the objects of their hatred. Mohammed B. added a macabre twist: he left a message of hatred for Jews, Christians, Europeans and Americans impaled to van Gogh's chest with the murder weapon, a bloody dagger.
Mohammed B. was no lone wolf; within a few days, Dutch police had arrested seven other members of what they claimed was a terrorist group, and Spanish authorities said they believed the order for the ritual murder had come from terrorist leaders in their country. If that is correct, the van Gogh slaughter wasn't merely the result of local circumstances, but rather the product of a continental network of like-minded fanatics.
As the outstanding Italian journalist Magdi Allam sadly noted in the Corriere della Sera a few days after the event, the murder of van Gogh probably marked the end of Europe's multicultural utopian dream, because it forces politically correct Europeans to face an identity crisis that is eerily symmetrical with the same sort of crisis that has been afflicting Muslims for the past 30 years. Both were provoked by Western victories: The humiliation of Arab armies by Israel in 1967, and the defeat and dissolution of the Soviet Empire.
The Six-Day War and the ensuing collapse of the dream of a pan-Arab empire catalyzed a resurgence of fundamentalist Islam and its intense intolerance of social, religious and political freedoms. In Allam's neat formulation, al Qaeda represents the privatization and globalization of Islamic terrorism in its crudest and most hateful form. Yet it appeals to many Muslims, including some living and even born in the West, because they find it spiritually fulfilling, and also because there is no spiritual force in Europe capable of challenging it.
As things stand, the Europeans are so enthralled by cultural relativism and political correctness that they are totally unwilling to challenge any idea, even the jihadists' program of creating a theocratic state within Western civil society. The terrorist groups consider themselves autonomous, a community of believers opposed to the broader community of unbelievers and apostates.
The killing of Theo van Gogh is a textbook case of what happens when a tolerant but confused society takes political correctness to its illogical extreme. For Mohammed B. did not choose terrorism all by himself. He was indoctrinated and recruited in a mosque where he was pumped full of the Wahabbi doctrine "predominant in Saudi Arabia." The murder of van Gogh was an instant replay of the many murders carried out by Zarqawi and his followers in Iraq, extolled by fanatical Muslim Imams. As Allam reminds us, not all mosques are fundamentalist, extremist, or terrorist, but all the fundamentalists, extremists, and terrorists got that way in mosques.
The Dutch — like every other European society I know — were unwilling to recognize that they had potentially lethal enemies within, and that it was necessary to impose the rules of civil behavior on everyone within their domain. The rules of political correctness made it impossible even to criticize the jihadists, never mind compel them to observe the rules of civil society. Just look at what happened the next day: An artist in Rotterdam improvised a wall fresco that consisted of an angel and the words "Thou Shalt Not Kill." The local imam protested, and local authorities removed the fresco.
That's what happens when a culture is relativized to the point of suicide. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan once remarked of an American politician, "he can no longer distinguish between our friends and our enemies, and so he has ended by adopting our enemies' view of the world." This has now befallen Europe, which cannot distinguish between free societies — their natural friends — like the United States and Israel, and has ended by embracing enemies such as the radical Islamist regimes and elevating Yasser Arafat to near beatific stature.
The process by which the Europeans arrived at this grave impasse has been going on ever since the late 19th century, when the intelligentsia revolted against "bourgeois society" and its values, and sought for deeper meaning in acts of nihilistic violence, in fascism and communism, and in vast wars that engulfed the rest of the world. The Europeans might have confronted their spiritual crisis after the Second World War (some brave souls, like Albert Camus, tried), but the Cold War tamped it down. With a huge enemy on their borders, the Europeans finessed the issue, opted for a soulless materialism (that has given them a nanny state and a birth rate that promises to extinguish them in relatively short order), and pretended that the core of Western civilization was irrelevant to their lives.
When the Cold War ended, the crisis was still there, but they projected it onto us. The United States "needed an enemy," they scoffed, because otherwise we could not define our mission. But they were the ones who had lost their enemy, and thus had to face their own terrible contradictions and moral failures. Now they deride us because of our presumed archaic faith. They even equate American religion with the fundamentalism that now menaces them inside their model cities and threatens their enormously self-satisfied secular utopia.
Holland is now in the grips of violent reaction. Mosques and religious schools are firebombed. Emergency measures have been enacted. The Dutch are groping for a "solution," but they are still ducking the real problem, which, to their consternation, we are dealing with more effectively and far more self-confidently. "The multicultural crisis," Magdi Allam wisely reminds us, "should teach us that only a West with a strong religious, cultural and moral identity can challenge and open itself to the 'others' in a constructive and peaceful way. And that the goal must be a system of shared values within a common identity."
Take a Ride to Exurbia
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: November 9, 2004
Columnist Page: David Brooks
Forum: Discuss This Column
E-mail: dabrooks@nytimes.com
Orlando, Fla.
About six months ago I came out with a book on the booming exurbs - places like the I-4 corridor in central Florida and Henderson, Nev. These are the places where George Bush racked up the amazing vote totals that allowed him to retain the presidency.
My book started with Witold Rybczynski's observation that America's population is decentralizing faster than any other society's in history. People in established suburbs are moving out to vast sprawling exurbs that have broken free of the gravitational pull of the cities and now exist in their own world far beyond.
Ninety percent of the office space built in America in the 1990's was built in suburbia, usually in low office parks along the interstates. Now you have a tribe of people who not only don't work in cities, they don't commute to cities or go to the movies in cities or have any contact with urban life. You have these huge, sprawling communities with no center. Mesa, Ariz., for example, has more people than St. Louis or Minneapolis.
In my book I tried to describe the culture in these places - the office parks, the big-box malls, the travel teams and the immigrant enclaves. But when it came to marketing the book, I failed in two important ways.
I couldn't figure out how to tell the people in exurbia that I had written a book about them. Here I was writing about places like Loudoun County, Va., and Polk County, Fla., but my book tour took me to places like downtown Philadelphia, downtown Seattle and the Upper West Side. The places I was writing about are so new, and civic life is as yet so spare, there are few lecture series or big libraries to host author talks. The normal publishing infrastructure is missing.
I was about to give a reading in Berkeley when I asked a few of the bookstore employees if they sold many copies of Rick Warren's book, "The Purpose-Driven Life." They weren't familiar with the book, even though it has sold millions and millions of copies. I realized there are two conversations in this country. I was in the establishment conversation, but somehow I needed to get into the Rick Warren conversation and I could never find a way.
That's why I'm so impressed by Karl Rove. As a group of Times reporters demonstrated in Sunday's paper, the Republicans achieved huge turnout gains in exurbs like the ones in central Florida. The Republicans permeated those communities, and spread their message.
My second failure is that I could never get my parts of blue America really curious about exurban culture. There were exceptions. For example, when Al From of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council learned what I was writing about, he was right on it, inviting me to speak to Democratic groups to describe the importance of the exurbs. He knew how vital they would be.
But I couldn't get most of the people I spoke to really fascinated, even in an anthropological sense, by these new places. That's in part because I was struggling against a half-century of stereotyping. Movies from "The Graduate" to "American Beauty" have reinforced the idea that the suburbs are bland, materialistic, ticky-tacky boxes in a hillside where people are conformist on the outside and hollow within. The stereotype is absurd, but it closes off fresh thinking.
The other problem I had is that I didn't adequately describe the oxymoronic attraction these places have for millions of people. On the one hand, people move to exurbs because they want some order in their lives. They leave places with arduous commutes, backbreaking mortgages, broken families and stressed social structures and they head for towns with ample living space, intact families, child-friendly public culture and intensely enforced social equality. That's bourgeois.
On the other hand, they are taking a daring leap into the unknown, moving to towns that have barely been built, working often in high-tech office parks doing pioneering work in biotech and nanotechnology. These exurbs are conservative but also utopian - Mayberrys with BlackBerrys.
The Republicans won in part because Bush and Rove understand this culture. Everybody is giving advice to Democrats these days, and mine is don't take any advice from anybody with access to the media - including me, just to be safe.
Get out into the sprawl, into that other conversation. Take your time. It's a new world out there.
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: November 9, 2004
Columnist Page: David Brooks
Forum: Discuss This Column
E-mail: dabrooks@nytimes.com
Orlando, Fla.
About six months ago I came out with a book on the booming exurbs - places like the I-4 corridor in central Florida and Henderson, Nev. These are the places where George Bush racked up the amazing vote totals that allowed him to retain the presidency.
My book started with Witold Rybczynski's observation that America's population is decentralizing faster than any other society's in history. People in established suburbs are moving out to vast sprawling exurbs that have broken free of the gravitational pull of the cities and now exist in their own world far beyond.
Ninety percent of the office space built in America in the 1990's was built in suburbia, usually in low office parks along the interstates. Now you have a tribe of people who not only don't work in cities, they don't commute to cities or go to the movies in cities or have any contact with urban life. You have these huge, sprawling communities with no center. Mesa, Ariz., for example, has more people than St. Louis or Minneapolis.
In my book I tried to describe the culture in these places - the office parks, the big-box malls, the travel teams and the immigrant enclaves. But when it came to marketing the book, I failed in two important ways.
I couldn't figure out how to tell the people in exurbia that I had written a book about them. Here I was writing about places like Loudoun County, Va., and Polk County, Fla., but my book tour took me to places like downtown Philadelphia, downtown Seattle and the Upper West Side. The places I was writing about are so new, and civic life is as yet so spare, there are few lecture series or big libraries to host author talks. The normal publishing infrastructure is missing.
I was about to give a reading in Berkeley when I asked a few of the bookstore employees if they sold many copies of Rick Warren's book, "The Purpose-Driven Life." They weren't familiar with the book, even though it has sold millions and millions of copies. I realized there are two conversations in this country. I was in the establishment conversation, but somehow I needed to get into the Rick Warren conversation and I could never find a way.
That's why I'm so impressed by Karl Rove. As a group of Times reporters demonstrated in Sunday's paper, the Republicans achieved huge turnout gains in exurbs like the ones in central Florida. The Republicans permeated those communities, and spread their message.
My second failure is that I could never get my parts of blue America really curious about exurban culture. There were exceptions. For example, when Al From of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council learned what I was writing about, he was right on it, inviting me to speak to Democratic groups to describe the importance of the exurbs. He knew how vital they would be.
But I couldn't get most of the people I spoke to really fascinated, even in an anthropological sense, by these new places. That's in part because I was struggling against a half-century of stereotyping. Movies from "The Graduate" to "American Beauty" have reinforced the idea that the suburbs are bland, materialistic, ticky-tacky boxes in a hillside where people are conformist on the outside and hollow within. The stereotype is absurd, but it closes off fresh thinking.
The other problem I had is that I didn't adequately describe the oxymoronic attraction these places have for millions of people. On the one hand, people move to exurbs because they want some order in their lives. They leave places with arduous commutes, backbreaking mortgages, broken families and stressed social structures and they head for towns with ample living space, intact families, child-friendly public culture and intensely enforced social equality. That's bourgeois.
On the other hand, they are taking a daring leap into the unknown, moving to towns that have barely been built, working often in high-tech office parks doing pioneering work in biotech and nanotechnology. These exurbs are conservative but also utopian - Mayberrys with BlackBerrys.
The Republicans won in part because Bush and Rove understand this culture. Everybody is giving advice to Democrats these days, and mine is don't take any advice from anybody with access to the media - including me, just to be safe.
Get out into the sprawl, into that other conversation. Take your time. It's a new world out there.
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
Disaster Relief
by Philippe Legrain
Only at TNR Online
Post date: 11.10.04
London, England
t goes without saying that George W. Bush is not loved in Europe. Even before the Iraq war raised animosity toward him to fever pitch, the perceived stupidity, ignorance, and arrogance of the "Texan cowboy" had gone down badly across the Atlantic. His evangelical Christian beliefs do not sit well with mostly secular Europeans. His assertion of U.S. exceptionalism sticks in the craw. His contemptuous dismissal of the United Nations has angered even those Europeans who normally favor a strong alliance with the United States. So two days after the presidential election, when the Daily Mirror ran a front page picture of Bush next to the headline, "How can 59,054,087 people be so dumb?," it was widely assumed that the paper was reflecting popular sentiment in this part of the world.
And it was speaking for most Europeans--just not for the Europeans who matter most. In France, Norway, Holland, Spain, Germany, Italy, and Britain, those surveyed preferred Kerry by ludicrously large margins that reached, in some countries, as high as eleven to one. (Only in Poland did researchers find a slim plurality of 31 to 26 for Bush.) But if the European public was rooting for Kerry, the preferences of European leaders were another matter entirely. And there is reason to suspect that, privately, most are relieved that Bush won reelection. Why? Because a Kerry victory was neither in the interests of those leaders (like Tony Blair) who have aligned themselves with Bush, nor to the advantage of antiwar leaders (like Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroder) who would have had to become more involved in war-torn Iraq if Kerry had won.
Start with Blair. Perhaps to appease those in the ruling Labor Party who fear they could pay a heavy price for their leader's perceived closeness to the unpopular U.S. president in the British general election expected next year, some in Blair's circle hinted, prior to last Tuesday, that the prime minister was rooting for Kerry. But the truth is that a Kerry victory would have left Blair dangerously exposed, with his two closest allies on Iraq, Bush and Jose Maria Aznar of Spain, going down to defeat in the span of seven months. Blair would have found it even harder to defend an already-unpopular war to his constituents if the new man in the White House admitted the war was a mistake. Italy's Silvio Berlusconi and Poland's Aleksander Kwasniewski, having both cast their lots with Bush on Iraq, would also likely have been reluctant to see him go.
But the consequences of a Kerry victory would have been least attractive for antiwar leaders like Chirac, Schroder, and Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Spain's new prime minister. Don't be fooled by the statement of Hubert Vedrine, the French foreign minister, who said that following the U.S. election there is "a kind of hangover in global opinion ... just about all peoples wanted a change." The central plank of Kerry's plan for improving the situation in Iraq was to "internationalize" it--that is, to get France, Germany, and other countries involved so as to reduce the military and financial burden on the United States and enhance the legitimacy of American-led operations in the country. Such pressure from a freshly elected U.S. president who had made so much of the vital need for America to consult and value its European allies would have been hard for Chirac, Schroder, and Zapatero to resist. To reject Kerry's entreaties would not only poison relations with the new president; it would also confirm what most Republicans believe--that France and Germany are simply not reliable allies.
Yet for all the good will that Kerry would have enjoyed among European voters--for the simple reasons that he is not Bush and pays lip service to things they cherish, such as the need to combat climate change--there would have been little appetite for getting involved in the quagmire that Iraq has become. Neither Chirac nor Schroder are strong leaders; both are unpopular and are known more for their opportunism than their willingness to go out on a limb for their principles. Neither would have relished the thorny dilemma that a Kerry victory would have posed. Muddling along with Bush is politically safer--and therefore preferable.
And beyond Iraq, Bush's hardline unilateralism has proven to be a powerful tool for Chirac and Schroder. His black-and-white rhetoric--"you're either with or against us"--provides a much better foil for European leaders than Kerry's consensus-seeking style. As a result, those who dream of constructing a European counterweight to American power no doubt took succor from Bush's victory. The more Bush is seen to ignore Europe's views, the greater the potential demand for a common European response that America cannot afford to ignore. François Bayrou, the head of France's center-right Union for French Democracy party, probably spoke for many when he said after the election, "Confronted with a more determined America, Europe must be strong." In short, a majority of ordinary Europeans genuinely mourned Kerry's loss. But many, perhaps most, of their leaders did not.
Philippe Legrain was a special advisor to WTO Director-General Mike Moore. He is the author of Open World: The Truth about Globalization.
by Philippe Legrain
Only at TNR Online
Post date: 11.10.04
London, England
t goes without saying that George W. Bush is not loved in Europe. Even before the Iraq war raised animosity toward him to fever pitch, the perceived stupidity, ignorance, and arrogance of the "Texan cowboy" had gone down badly across the Atlantic. His evangelical Christian beliefs do not sit well with mostly secular Europeans. His assertion of U.S. exceptionalism sticks in the craw. His contemptuous dismissal of the United Nations has angered even those Europeans who normally favor a strong alliance with the United States. So two days after the presidential election, when the Daily Mirror ran a front page picture of Bush next to the headline, "How can 59,054,087 people be so dumb?," it was widely assumed that the paper was reflecting popular sentiment in this part of the world.
And it was speaking for most Europeans--just not for the Europeans who matter most. In France, Norway, Holland, Spain, Germany, Italy, and Britain, those surveyed preferred Kerry by ludicrously large margins that reached, in some countries, as high as eleven to one. (Only in Poland did researchers find a slim plurality of 31 to 26 for Bush.) But if the European public was rooting for Kerry, the preferences of European leaders were another matter entirely. And there is reason to suspect that, privately, most are relieved that Bush won reelection. Why? Because a Kerry victory was neither in the interests of those leaders (like Tony Blair) who have aligned themselves with Bush, nor to the advantage of antiwar leaders (like Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroder) who would have had to become more involved in war-torn Iraq if Kerry had won.
Start with Blair. Perhaps to appease those in the ruling Labor Party who fear they could pay a heavy price for their leader's perceived closeness to the unpopular U.S. president in the British general election expected next year, some in Blair's circle hinted, prior to last Tuesday, that the prime minister was rooting for Kerry. But the truth is that a Kerry victory would have left Blair dangerously exposed, with his two closest allies on Iraq, Bush and Jose Maria Aznar of Spain, going down to defeat in the span of seven months. Blair would have found it even harder to defend an already-unpopular war to his constituents if the new man in the White House admitted the war was a mistake. Italy's Silvio Berlusconi and Poland's Aleksander Kwasniewski, having both cast their lots with Bush on Iraq, would also likely have been reluctant to see him go.
But the consequences of a Kerry victory would have been least attractive for antiwar leaders like Chirac, Schroder, and Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Spain's new prime minister. Don't be fooled by the statement of Hubert Vedrine, the French foreign minister, who said that following the U.S. election there is "a kind of hangover in global opinion ... just about all peoples wanted a change." The central plank of Kerry's plan for improving the situation in Iraq was to "internationalize" it--that is, to get France, Germany, and other countries involved so as to reduce the military and financial burden on the United States and enhance the legitimacy of American-led operations in the country. Such pressure from a freshly elected U.S. president who had made so much of the vital need for America to consult and value its European allies would have been hard for Chirac, Schroder, and Zapatero to resist. To reject Kerry's entreaties would not only poison relations with the new president; it would also confirm what most Republicans believe--that France and Germany are simply not reliable allies.
Yet for all the good will that Kerry would have enjoyed among European voters--for the simple reasons that he is not Bush and pays lip service to things they cherish, such as the need to combat climate change--there would have been little appetite for getting involved in the quagmire that Iraq has become. Neither Chirac nor Schroder are strong leaders; both are unpopular and are known more for their opportunism than their willingness to go out on a limb for their principles. Neither would have relished the thorny dilemma that a Kerry victory would have posed. Muddling along with Bush is politically safer--and therefore preferable.
And beyond Iraq, Bush's hardline unilateralism has proven to be a powerful tool for Chirac and Schroder. His black-and-white rhetoric--"you're either with or against us"--provides a much better foil for European leaders than Kerry's consensus-seeking style. As a result, those who dream of constructing a European counterweight to American power no doubt took succor from Bush's victory. The more Bush is seen to ignore Europe's views, the greater the potential demand for a common European response that America cannot afford to ignore. François Bayrou, the head of France's center-right Union for French Democracy party, probably spoke for many when he said after the election, "Confronted with a more determined America, Europe must be strong." In short, a majority of ordinary Europeans genuinely mourned Kerry's loss. But many, perhaps most, of their leaders did not.
Philippe Legrain was a special advisor to WTO Director-General Mike Moore. He is the author of Open World: The Truth about Globalization.
Tuesday, November 09, 2004
Hispanic Voters Declared Their Independence
By KIRK JOHNSON
ENVER, Nov. 8 - The Spanish-language television advertisements for President Bush went negative this fall, attacking Senator John Kerry's voting record and his stance on abortion. Mr. Kerry's Spanish television advertisements, in keeping with the traditional appeals that Democrats have made to Hispanic voters for generations, mostly stayed positive, rarely even mentioning Mr. Bush's name.
But in the end, Mr. Bush won 44 percent of the Hispanic vote, more than any Republican presidential candidate in at least three decades. That tally, more than 10 percentage points higher than he received in 2000, shattered the Democrats' hopes that a growing Hispanic population would help Mr. Kerry in Colorado or New Mexico, or perhaps even Florida.
Few experts say they believe Mr. Bush has achieved a seismic shift of the sort that Ronald Reagan brought about in the early 1980's in winning over blue-collar white voters. A clear majority of Hispanics, after all, still voted for Mr. Kerry.
What is unquestionably clear, those experts say, is that like the great Latino wave in pop culture, which has more and more influence in areas like music, food and fashion, this election has taken Hispanic voters a giant leap away from being thought of as separate and different. A reliable Democrat no longer, taken for granted no longer - and more electable than ever in their own right, with the first two Hispanic United States senators in 30 years poised to take office, from Colorado and Florida - a new swing voter may have emerged.
"The bottom line to me is that with this result, it's no longer sensible to think of Hispanic voters on a national basis as a core constituency of the Democratic Party," said Roberto Suro, the director of the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research organization based in Washington.
"We are up for grabs," said F. Chris Garcia, a professor of political science at the University of New Mexico. "That is a good thing for Hispanics; we're going to be more influential in the future and a bigger target for both campaigns."
No one thing explains how Mr. Bush was able to achieve this coup. The loyalty of Cuban-Americans already gave the Republican Party a foothold among Hispanic voters, and Mr. Bush was already strong among Hispanic voters in Texas, who are mainly Mexican-Americans.
But the two parties' different strategies, reflected in the Spanish television advertisements, Hispanic scholars and political analysts say, were revealing if not decisive. The Bush campaign approached Hispanic voters exactly the way it did everybody else: by reaching out for cultural conservatives, who in this case just happened to be Hispanic. The Kerry campaign sought votes as if Hispanics, as in the past, were reliably Democrat. The advertisements emphasized issues like immigration and economic opportunity and used few attack advertisement techniques, omnipresent on English-language television, to close the deal.
"The Democrats made a broad appeal to a Democratic base and not a specific appeal at all to religious Hispanic voters, or even specific segments of the Hispanic electorate," said Adam Segal, director of the Hispanic Voter Project at the Johns Hopkins University. "The Bush campaign used moral values, and specifically the national discussion over gay marriage and abortion rights, as wedge issues within the Hispanic community to try to break off a conservative religious segment."
Les Dorrance, a security guard in Denver whose family has lived in Colorado for generations, is the kind of Hispanic voter the Bush campaign went after and won.
Mr. Dorrance said conservative values about abortion and the sanctity of marriage were important issues for him, and he went straight down the Republican line after Mr. Bush's name, even going so far as to vote against Ken Salazar, the lone Hispanic on Colorado's statewide ballot, in the process. Mr. Salazar beat the Republican candidate, Pete Coors, for the open Senate seat being vacated by Ben Nighthorse Campbell, a Republican who chose not to seek a third term.
"I voted for Bush based on his moral stance," Mr. Dorrance said on a recent sunny morning in Denver as he patrolled outside a downtown office building. "Bush is pro-life, I'm pro-life. He believes marriage should be between a man and a woman, and so do I."
But conservative social values were just part of the appeal, experts say.
Hispanics are heavily represented in the Marines, for example, and according to some national polls are about as patriotic as Americans get; both factors could have increased support for a sitting president in wartime. And the the candidates's focus on security and global terrorism may have blunted the domestic and economic issues that Democrats have used in the past to score well with the heavily blue-collar Hispanic population.
"The campaigns, either purposefully or not, didn't bring to the forefront things like jobs, education and health care," said Janet Murguia, the executive director and chief operating officer of the National Council of La Raza, a nonpartisan civil rights group. "At the same time there was a very concerted effort by the Republicans to target the Hispanic community in some new ways."
Ms. Murguia said the Roman Catholic Church had a role in that outreach, with sermons and other messages in Spanish-speaking parishes on abortion and embryonic stem cell research, which many conservatives oppose because it can result in destroying human embryos.
Negative advertisements by the Bush campaign on Spanish television were also an innovation this year, according to the Hispanic Voter Project at Johns Hopkins. In the 2000 campaign, neither Mr. Bush nor his Democratic opponent, Al Gore, used negative Spanish-language television advertisements, school officials said.
Even the tagline that was used in many print advertisements under the president's name reinforced the campaign's message that Mr. Bush was the candidate, despite all the history and tradition with the Democrats, who really spoke the inner language of Hispanic culture.
"Nos conocemos," the advertisements said. "We know each other."
Some political scholars caution that, like Americans in every category, more Hispanic voters cast ballots this year, so it is possible that on-the-ground organization was as responsible as a conservative Republican message. Mr. Bush may have done well, they say, because more of the people who already agreed with him went to the polls.
Mr. Bush has personally done well among Hispanic voters before. In his first election for president in 2000, he got 35 percent of the Hispanic vote, second until this year only to Mr. Reagan, who got at least 37 percent in 1984, according to voter surveys going back to 1972.
It is too early, some experts say, to suggest that Bush Hispanics will join the ranks of Reagan Democrats. Professor Garcia of the University of New Mexico, for example, does not think that this election portends a permanent new pattern in the Hispanic vote.
"One swallow does not make a spring," he said.
But other experts say that crossing the 40 percent threshold is a turning point, especially given that the rapidly growing Hispanic population has become the largest ethnic minority in the nation.
Mr. Suro, and others, say that perhaps the real message of the election is that Hispanic voters cannot be pigeonholed. In a year when the national Democratic Party floundered in reaching Hispanics, the first two in 30 years were elected to the United States Senate: Mr. Salazar, a Democrat, here in Colorado, and Mel Martinez, a Republican, who was elected to the seat being vacated by Senator Bob Graham in Florida.
But where Mr. Salazar is a moderate with deep rural roots as a farmer and rancher, Mr. Martinez is a conservative Cuban-American who is Mr. Bush's former secretary of housing and urban development. And both had to appeal far outside any traditionally defined ethnic voting bloc to be elected.
By KIRK JOHNSON
ENVER, Nov. 8 - The Spanish-language television advertisements for President Bush went negative this fall, attacking Senator John Kerry's voting record and his stance on abortion. Mr. Kerry's Spanish television advertisements, in keeping with the traditional appeals that Democrats have made to Hispanic voters for generations, mostly stayed positive, rarely even mentioning Mr. Bush's name.
But in the end, Mr. Bush won 44 percent of the Hispanic vote, more than any Republican presidential candidate in at least three decades. That tally, more than 10 percentage points higher than he received in 2000, shattered the Democrats' hopes that a growing Hispanic population would help Mr. Kerry in Colorado or New Mexico, or perhaps even Florida.
Few experts say they believe Mr. Bush has achieved a seismic shift of the sort that Ronald Reagan brought about in the early 1980's in winning over blue-collar white voters. A clear majority of Hispanics, after all, still voted for Mr. Kerry.
What is unquestionably clear, those experts say, is that like the great Latino wave in pop culture, which has more and more influence in areas like music, food and fashion, this election has taken Hispanic voters a giant leap away from being thought of as separate and different. A reliable Democrat no longer, taken for granted no longer - and more electable than ever in their own right, with the first two Hispanic United States senators in 30 years poised to take office, from Colorado and Florida - a new swing voter may have emerged.
"The bottom line to me is that with this result, it's no longer sensible to think of Hispanic voters on a national basis as a core constituency of the Democratic Party," said Roberto Suro, the director of the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research organization based in Washington.
"We are up for grabs," said F. Chris Garcia, a professor of political science at the University of New Mexico. "That is a good thing for Hispanics; we're going to be more influential in the future and a bigger target for both campaigns."
No one thing explains how Mr. Bush was able to achieve this coup. The loyalty of Cuban-Americans already gave the Republican Party a foothold among Hispanic voters, and Mr. Bush was already strong among Hispanic voters in Texas, who are mainly Mexican-Americans.
But the two parties' different strategies, reflected in the Spanish television advertisements, Hispanic scholars and political analysts say, were revealing if not decisive. The Bush campaign approached Hispanic voters exactly the way it did everybody else: by reaching out for cultural conservatives, who in this case just happened to be Hispanic. The Kerry campaign sought votes as if Hispanics, as in the past, were reliably Democrat. The advertisements emphasized issues like immigration and economic opportunity and used few attack advertisement techniques, omnipresent on English-language television, to close the deal.
"The Democrats made a broad appeal to a Democratic base and not a specific appeal at all to religious Hispanic voters, or even specific segments of the Hispanic electorate," said Adam Segal, director of the Hispanic Voter Project at the Johns Hopkins University. "The Bush campaign used moral values, and specifically the national discussion over gay marriage and abortion rights, as wedge issues within the Hispanic community to try to break off a conservative religious segment."
Les Dorrance, a security guard in Denver whose family has lived in Colorado for generations, is the kind of Hispanic voter the Bush campaign went after and won.
Mr. Dorrance said conservative values about abortion and the sanctity of marriage were important issues for him, and he went straight down the Republican line after Mr. Bush's name, even going so far as to vote against Ken Salazar, the lone Hispanic on Colorado's statewide ballot, in the process. Mr. Salazar beat the Republican candidate, Pete Coors, for the open Senate seat being vacated by Ben Nighthorse Campbell, a Republican who chose not to seek a third term.
"I voted for Bush based on his moral stance," Mr. Dorrance said on a recent sunny morning in Denver as he patrolled outside a downtown office building. "Bush is pro-life, I'm pro-life. He believes marriage should be between a man and a woman, and so do I."
But conservative social values were just part of the appeal, experts say.
Hispanics are heavily represented in the Marines, for example, and according to some national polls are about as patriotic as Americans get; both factors could have increased support for a sitting president in wartime. And the the candidates's focus on security and global terrorism may have blunted the domestic and economic issues that Democrats have used in the past to score well with the heavily blue-collar Hispanic population.
"The campaigns, either purposefully or not, didn't bring to the forefront things like jobs, education and health care," said Janet Murguia, the executive director and chief operating officer of the National Council of La Raza, a nonpartisan civil rights group. "At the same time there was a very concerted effort by the Republicans to target the Hispanic community in some new ways."
Ms. Murguia said the Roman Catholic Church had a role in that outreach, with sermons and other messages in Spanish-speaking parishes on abortion and embryonic stem cell research, which many conservatives oppose because it can result in destroying human embryos.
Negative advertisements by the Bush campaign on Spanish television were also an innovation this year, according to the Hispanic Voter Project at Johns Hopkins. In the 2000 campaign, neither Mr. Bush nor his Democratic opponent, Al Gore, used negative Spanish-language television advertisements, school officials said.
Even the tagline that was used in many print advertisements under the president's name reinforced the campaign's message that Mr. Bush was the candidate, despite all the history and tradition with the Democrats, who really spoke the inner language of Hispanic culture.
"Nos conocemos," the advertisements said. "We know each other."
Some political scholars caution that, like Americans in every category, more Hispanic voters cast ballots this year, so it is possible that on-the-ground organization was as responsible as a conservative Republican message. Mr. Bush may have done well, they say, because more of the people who already agreed with him went to the polls.
Mr. Bush has personally done well among Hispanic voters before. In his first election for president in 2000, he got 35 percent of the Hispanic vote, second until this year only to Mr. Reagan, who got at least 37 percent in 1984, according to voter surveys going back to 1972.
It is too early, some experts say, to suggest that Bush Hispanics will join the ranks of Reagan Democrats. Professor Garcia of the University of New Mexico, for example, does not think that this election portends a permanent new pattern in the Hispanic vote.
"One swallow does not make a spring," he said.
But other experts say that crossing the 40 percent threshold is a turning point, especially given that the rapidly growing Hispanic population has become the largest ethnic minority in the nation.
Mr. Suro, and others, say that perhaps the real message of the election is that Hispanic voters cannot be pigeonholed. In a year when the national Democratic Party floundered in reaching Hispanics, the first two in 30 years were elected to the United States Senate: Mr. Salazar, a Democrat, here in Colorado, and Mel Martinez, a Republican, who was elected to the seat being vacated by Senator Bob Graham in Florida.
But where Mr. Salazar is a moderate with deep rural roots as a farmer and rancher, Mr. Martinez is a conservative Cuban-American who is Mr. Bush's former secretary of housing and urban development. And both had to appeal far outside any traditionally defined ethnic voting bloc to be elected.
Polls Apart
by Lawrence F. Kaplan
Only at TNR Online
Post date: 11.08.04
he day after the election, a friend--okay, my father--phoned to let me know me he was packing his bags for Australia. The very thought of enduring four more years of George W. Bush was too much for him to contemplate. And so it went last week, as a parade of friends and relatives, knowing full well that I supported Bush, phoned and emailed to deplore the country's ignorance. Echoing a question posed by Slate, they asked: Why do so many Americans hate Democrats? Maybe, just maybe, the answer has something to do with the fact that so many Democrats seem to hate them.
Novelist Jane Smiley's contribution to the Slate symposium is instructive: "The election results reflect the decision of the right wing to cultivate and exploit ignorance in the citizenry. ... Ignorance and bloodlust have a long tradition in the United States, especially in the red states. ... The error that progressives have consistently committed over the years is to underestimate the vitality of ignorance in America." Nor have such expressions of contempt been confined to fiction writers. The ever-reliable New York Times columnist Paul Krugman opined that "Democrats are not going to get the support of people whose votes are motivated, above all, by their opposition to abortion and gay rights (and, in the background, minority rights)" while across the page Gary Wills likened Bush voters to Al Qaeda operatives and Saddam loyalists. "Where else do we find fundamentalist zeal, a rage at secularity, religious intolerance, fear of and hatred for modernity?" he wondered.
None of this, to be sure, comes as anything new. In 1972 film critic Pauline Kael famously said: "I don't know how Richard Nixon could have won. I don't know anybody who voted for him." Over a decade later, E.L. Doctorow observed of Reagan-era America that "something poisonous has been set loose in the last several years ... something that is really rotten in America right now." During the 1990s, it was the Republicans' turn, as commentators on the right bemoaned the moral failings of an America that refused to demand the ouster of its philandering president. There is a word for this sort of condescension, and it isn't fear, concern, or anxiety about the impulses of Middle America. It is anti-Americanism.
The concept, Paul Hollander writes in his encyclopedic 1992 survey of anti-Americanism, "implies more than a critical disposition: it refers to critiques which are less than fully rational and not necessarily well founded." Critics of red America, needless to say, fancy themselves defenders of rationality. Or as Nation writer Eric Alterman puts it on his Altercation blog: "The problem is just this: Slightly more than half of the citizens of this country simply do not care about what those of us in the 'reality-based community' say or believe about anything." Neatly summarizing the views of this "reality-based community," Kerry volunteer Jessica Johnson of Cambridge, Massachusetts told The Boston Globe: "Many Americans have nothing between their ears. Americans are fat, lazy, and stupid. I don't like this country anymore."
If this is what passes for rational discourse on the left--and for too many liberals these days, it is--then just who is it that belongs to the "reality-based community" and just who is it that suffers under the weight of what the left used to call "false consciousness"? The question merits an answer, since Wills and otherwise sensible voices on the left--such as The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne, who professes himself "alarmed that so many of our fellow citizens could look the other way and not hold Bush accountable for utter incompetence in Iraq" and "amazed that a majority was not concerned about heaping a huge debt burden on our children just to give large tax breaks to the rich"--see their task as raising the level of consciousness of Americans out of step with reality. But what if their own estrangement leads not to insight, but rather to blindness and, more important, to separation from the very Americans they mean to influence?
To be alienated these days, after all, is what Todd Gitlin once described as "a rock-bottom prerequisite for membership" in an establishment of its own. That establishment, comprising much of the media, academia, the punditocracy, and indeed entire swaths of blue America, forms a cohesive community--with its own rewards, norms, and favorite enemies. And as the post-election commentary has revealed, one of those enemies happens to be mainstream America. The conceit, of course, is that none of its residents are listening when the likes of Smiley craps all over them. But they are, and have been all along. Moreover, as nearly every election going back to 1968 shows, the more liberals become estranged from Middle America, the more Middle America becomes estranged from them. The latter reaction, needless to say, generates far more votes. So long as the "reality-based community" denigrates the heartland's supposed ignorance, reality-based America will respond in kind.
by Lawrence F. Kaplan
Only at TNR Online
Post date: 11.08.04
he day after the election, a friend--okay, my father--phoned to let me know me he was packing his bags for Australia. The very thought of enduring four more years of George W. Bush was too much for him to contemplate. And so it went last week, as a parade of friends and relatives, knowing full well that I supported Bush, phoned and emailed to deplore the country's ignorance. Echoing a question posed by Slate, they asked: Why do so many Americans hate Democrats? Maybe, just maybe, the answer has something to do with the fact that so many Democrats seem to hate them.
Novelist Jane Smiley's contribution to the Slate symposium is instructive: "The election results reflect the decision of the right wing to cultivate and exploit ignorance in the citizenry. ... Ignorance and bloodlust have a long tradition in the United States, especially in the red states. ... The error that progressives have consistently committed over the years is to underestimate the vitality of ignorance in America." Nor have such expressions of contempt been confined to fiction writers. The ever-reliable New York Times columnist Paul Krugman opined that "Democrats are not going to get the support of people whose votes are motivated, above all, by their opposition to abortion and gay rights (and, in the background, minority rights)" while across the page Gary Wills likened Bush voters to Al Qaeda operatives and Saddam loyalists. "Where else do we find fundamentalist zeal, a rage at secularity, religious intolerance, fear of and hatred for modernity?" he wondered.
None of this, to be sure, comes as anything new. In 1972 film critic Pauline Kael famously said: "I don't know how Richard Nixon could have won. I don't know anybody who voted for him." Over a decade later, E.L. Doctorow observed of Reagan-era America that "something poisonous has been set loose in the last several years ... something that is really rotten in America right now." During the 1990s, it was the Republicans' turn, as commentators on the right bemoaned the moral failings of an America that refused to demand the ouster of its philandering president. There is a word for this sort of condescension, and it isn't fear, concern, or anxiety about the impulses of Middle America. It is anti-Americanism.
The concept, Paul Hollander writes in his encyclopedic 1992 survey of anti-Americanism, "implies more than a critical disposition: it refers to critiques which are less than fully rational and not necessarily well founded." Critics of red America, needless to say, fancy themselves defenders of rationality. Or as Nation writer Eric Alterman puts it on his Altercation blog: "The problem is just this: Slightly more than half of the citizens of this country simply do not care about what those of us in the 'reality-based community' say or believe about anything." Neatly summarizing the views of this "reality-based community," Kerry volunteer Jessica Johnson of Cambridge, Massachusetts told The Boston Globe: "Many Americans have nothing between their ears. Americans are fat, lazy, and stupid. I don't like this country anymore."
If this is what passes for rational discourse on the left--and for too many liberals these days, it is--then just who is it that belongs to the "reality-based community" and just who is it that suffers under the weight of what the left used to call "false consciousness"? The question merits an answer, since Wills and otherwise sensible voices on the left--such as The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne, who professes himself "alarmed that so many of our fellow citizens could look the other way and not hold Bush accountable for utter incompetence in Iraq" and "amazed that a majority was not concerned about heaping a huge debt burden on our children just to give large tax breaks to the rich"--see their task as raising the level of consciousness of Americans out of step with reality. But what if their own estrangement leads not to insight, but rather to blindness and, more important, to separation from the very Americans they mean to influence?
To be alienated these days, after all, is what Todd Gitlin once described as "a rock-bottom prerequisite for membership" in an establishment of its own. That establishment, comprising much of the media, academia, the punditocracy, and indeed entire swaths of blue America, forms a cohesive community--with its own rewards, norms, and favorite enemies. And as the post-election commentary has revealed, one of those enemies happens to be mainstream America. The conceit, of course, is that none of its residents are listening when the likes of Smiley craps all over them. But they are, and have been all along. Moreover, as nearly every election going back to 1968 shows, the more liberals become estranged from Middle America, the more Middle America becomes estranged from them. The latter reaction, needless to say, generates far more votes. So long as the "reality-based community" denigrates the heartland's supposed ignorance, reality-based America will respond in kind.
