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Freedom, democracy, and BDS
Jay Nordlinger, National ReviewReporting from the World Economic Forum conference in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt Next at the podium is Bush . . . The applause that greets Bush when he appears is very, very brief. And that is as much applause as he will get. I will not try to recapitulate Bushs speech here, but you can read it on the White House website: here. . . . I remember when Irans Khatami appeared in Davos: He was greeted like some combination of Elvis and Gandhi. (He was known as a reformer, to be sure.) There were also representatives of Saddam Husseins regime, and the Assad dictatorship. Was the audience as frosty to them as to Bush? Bush-hatred is one of the most interesting phenomena of our times; to me, it is also one of the most disturbing. Consider Bushs speech at this conference, and its calls for freedom, democracy, and humaneness. If Bill Clinton gave the identical speech, what would the reaction be? And if Barack Obama gave it, word for word? I can see people on their feet, cheering. . . . In all probability, Bush could have said nothing here in Sharm El Sheikh that would have gained approval. Nothing short of a self-denunciation. And a thought occurs to me: Bush stands for sweeping change in the Middle East. And he was talking to a throng of people for whom life is pretty good. On the whole, they are affluent; a good number of them must have domestic servants. They have positions of power and influence. They travel internationally, including to conferences like this one. They are the haves, the societal winners. And who is Bushs Middle Eastern constituency? You could argue, they are the poor, the imprisoned, the hopeless. The poor need liberalization more than the rich. And no one in jail attends conferences. Bushs speech would have been much better received in, say, Syrian prisons. In the next hours, I hear many reviews of Bushs performance, and they are not good, to put it mildly. And I will tell you about a conversation I overhear an American woman is talking to some Middle Easterners in a lounge. I am typing this column. A man asks the woman, hesitantly, What did you think of Bushs speech? Oh, I hate Bush, she says. That is a jarring sentence to hear: I hate Bush. And she goes on. Some of her choice sentences: Democracy is overrated. All of us Americans in the audience, we were like, Do we applaud or what? His approval rating is 18 percent. No one cares about him anymore; everybody hates him. She allows that the First Lady, Laura Bush, seems nice. But then she drops this: The rumor is he hits her, you know. Sometimes I see her on television, and Im thinking, Poor woman. Then our American seems to have a prick of conscience: But I dont know maybe they have a great relationship. Here is a theme I have sounded many, many times, and will again: The American abroad can be tough to digest. For decades, people have denounced the ugly American the ugly American abroad. They mean conservative ignoramuses or loudmouths or bigots in Hawaiian shirts and shorts. But my idea of the ugly American is something else. . . . Posted by: Mike 2008-05-20 |
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