Do As I Say, Not As I Do - Bush

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Cif America
Paying lip service to multilateralism
George Bush's emphasis on international cooperation in his final UN speech is totally disconnected from his actions as president

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Ian Williams
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday September 23 2008 21:30 BST
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George Bush's parting speech to the UN on Tuesday was a bit like a rapist deciding to whisper sweet nothings as he climbs up off his victim. Sadly, most of his victims sat sycophantically and applauded, even if they muttered behind their name placards.

Last year, Bush's UN speech script went to the press with all his phonetic spellings put in, lest he insult dear friends and allies by mispronouncing their names. For his curtain call at the world body, for someone used to autocues, he intoned a competent if uninspiring sermon to the assembled world leaders. And avoided tricky names.

Luckily, the world had low expectations of his first visit eight years ago, so it could keep its disappointment within limits when he lowered the bar. Since then Bush has started several wars, threatened several more and brought the global economy to the precipice, while leaving his ungrateful nation several trillion dollars in extra debts from the Iraq war and bailouts to financial institutions – not a mention a few extra billion to the guys who owned and ran those institutions. It was not the best of backdrops for a farewell performance.

Most of the sentiments in his speech would have been unexceptional, and the congregation would have nodded in agreement and off to doze, were it not for the total disconnect between the sentiments expressed and the behaviour of the preacher.

He preached: "As sovereign states, we have an obligation to govern responsibly and solve problems before they spill across borders. We have an obligation to prevent our territory from being used as a sanctuary for terrorism and proliferation and human trafficking and organised crime."

All true, but it would ring more so if did not come from the lips of someone whose government was "trafficking" humans in rendition flights across the globe, or even one who had not allowed bank lobbyists to craft the financial regime that now threatens to crash the global economy.

"No cause can justify the deliberate taking of innocent human life," he said, which is almost beyond comment, although I am sure some Iraqi, Afghan or Pakistani villagers could be found who would rise to the task, let alone Lebanese villagers or Gazans minced up by US-supplied munitions.

The brave talk at Annapolis has shrunk down to one terse reference to "the people of the Palestinian Territories, who deserve a free and peaceful state of their own." If the settlers backed by American money leave them any space or water for it.

Of course, one of Bush's problems is that by the time he came to realise the usefulness, and indeed the indispensability of working through the UN, he had made it difficult for anyone to take his overtures seriously. It was the road to Baghdad rather than the road to Damascus that saw his conversion. There he and his neocon advisers were, cock-a-hoop at their victory, and there was nothing they could do with it. They could not sell Iraqi oil, and any regime they installed would have zero legitimacy.

They brought in the UN, but even though the UN administration and the security council were forgiving and went along, they could not show gratitude. Sending John Bolton was the equivalent of putting King Herod in charge of Unicef, as the White House, now savaged almost weekly by Bolton's Parthian fusillades, may realise. It does not help that Bush happily echoed Bolton's flip denigrations of the institution, calling it "the wax museum", seemingly insouciant that if you want people to rally to a flag, even a blue one, it's best not to smear it with crap before and even while you are waving it.

"The objectives I've laid out for multilateral institutions - confronting terror, opposing tyranny and promoting effective development - are difficult, but they are necessary tasks," Bush said. Presumably unlike climate change, which got not a single mention, despite Ban Ki-moon, who had just spoken about it as the "defining issue of our era". Bush presumably has great expectations of a lucrative post-retirement career funded by big oil.

Even so, Bolton will now be even grumpier, since his once-unilateral president used the word "multilateral" no less than nine times in his speech. But as with his predecessor, Bill Clinton, Bush used it without the connotations of collegiality with which less powerful nations imbue it. "Do as I say, not as I do" was the constant subtext.

Above all Bush cherishes the illusion that for the billions of the world faced with climate change, pollution, mass repression and killing by governments, not to mention simple starvation, "terrorism" is the biggest threat. He returned to it over and over again – and it can't be for domestic reasons, since polls suggest that the American electorate have put it in it proper perspective.

But look on the bright side, Bolton will be peeved that the Axis of Evil is currently down to two, Syria and Iran, although Hugo Chávez and Raul Castro may feel self-righteously peeved at being left out.