WASHINGTON, 22 January 2004 — The first rule of a State of the Union speech is to “put a Klieg light on the convenient facts and ignore the inconvenient ones,’’ said foreign policy veteran James. M. Lindsay.
And nowhere was that rule more in evidence than in President Bush’s appearance before a joint session of Congress Tuesday night to deliver a lead-with-the-chin defense of some of the most controversial aspects of his foreign policy.
On the elusive weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, for example, Bush continued to assert that the US-led war had quashed a looming threat to the world. But instead of declaring, as he had so often in the past, that such banned weapons would yet be found, Bush talked of “identifying dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations.’’ The phrasing was so tortured that, despite his practice sessions, Bush tripped over the words.
To support his carefully crafted treatment of WMD, Bush cited the findings of weapon-hunter David Kay. But the president’s characterization of what Kay said he found was “a very kind interpretation of what’s in the report,’’ said Lindsay, a vice president of the Council on Foreign Relations and author of a new book on Bush’s foreign policy. “It’s like a lawyer’s interpretation. You cast the facts in the most favorable light.’’
Similarly, Bush painted a bright picture of emerging democracy in Afghanistan — choosing not to address the problem of warlordism or the sweeping resurgence of Taleban forces that have put large swaths of the country off-limits to foreigners and Afghans working for relief or democracy.
“As of this month, that country has a new constitution, guaranteeing free elections and full participation by women,’’ Bush said. “Businesses are opening, health care centers are being established and the boys and girls of Afghanistan are back in school.’’
Even as he dealt artfully with the problem areas of his foreign policy, Bush returned again and again to the tough, pre-emptive foreign policy language that has been the hallmark of his administration since Sept. 11. Bush reasserted his untrammeled right to mount an “active defense’’ of US interests. “America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our people,’’ Bush said. The reaffirmation of such principles delighted conservatives — and was calculated to play to Bush’s greatest political strength: The perception by many Americans that he can be counted on not to make the US national interest subject to international approval.
“He came out swinging,’’ said Helle Dale, a vice president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank. “He took on all his critics, and he answered them ... in a series of important points on terrorism, on Iraq, on WMD, on Afghanistan, Libya, and North Korea. He went down the whole list, and he basically did not budge from his decisions.’’
Nonetheless, Bush’s unyielding rhetoric seemed to contradict the more multilateral, inclusive policies that his administration has been pursing recently in postwar Iraq.
The speech came a day after the United States, in a tactical reversal, asked the United Nations to help rescue its troubled political strategy for handing over sovereignty to a transitional Iraqi government. And Vice President Dick Cheney is preparing to head for Europe to cultivate the allies so alienated by the American decision to wage war in Iraq without UNo blessing.
Bush also seemed to endorse Tuesday the traditional diplomacy his envoys have been pursuing with North Korea and Iran on the issue of developing nuclear weapons. Different cases require different approaches, he suggested.
The president announced no major new foreign policy initiatives but promised to double funding for the National Endowment for Democracy to help promote “free elections, free markets, free press and free labor unions in the Middle East.’’ That proposal is sure to win support from both parties in Congress, as the endowment is widely perceived as effective in promoting democratic ideals abroad.
This could be significant, given the demand by Iraq’s most powerful Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, for direct elections to choose a new Iraqi government, noted Judith Yaphe, a Middle East expert at National Defense University in Washington.
The United States has said there is no time to prepare free and fair elections by June 30 but has asked the United Nations to send a team in to study the issue.
In last year’s State of the Union address, on the eve of the Iraq war, Bush noted that the United Nations had concluded Saddam Hussein had the material needed to produce 25,000 liters of anthrax and more than 38,000 liters of botulinus toxin — enough to kill millions of people.
‘’He hasn’t accounted for that material,” Bush said at the time. ‘’He’s given no evidence that he has destroyed it.”
Bush then spoke 16 words that caused his administration more grief than any other claim in 2003:
‘’The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” The administration later admitted that US officials had warned at the time that they believed intelligence was wrong and retracted the sentence. The episode was not mentioned in Tuesday night’s speech.
The failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq continues to be a focal point for Bush’s critics.
