I was preparing to write a lengthy blog post responding point by point to the many erroneous assertions and flawed arguments contained within the president’s State of the Union address, but then I discovered that I didn’t have to. Veteran Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler did it for me.
Among the gems contained within Kessler’s article:
– “The Shia and Sunni extremists are different faces of the same totalitarian threat,” the president said. In other words, Kessler writes: “Under Bush’s rubric, a country such as Iran … is lumped together with al-Qaeda, the terrorist group responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.”
– With respect to Hezbollah, which President Bush singled out as a terrorist group “second only to al-Qaeda in the American lives it has taken,” Kessler points out that those attacks on the U.S. embassy and a Marine barracks in Lebanon occurred “nearly a quarter-century ago…when the United States intervened in Lebanon’s civil war by shelling Hezbollah strongholds.”
– In the president’s cataloguing of the actions of “the enemy” since 2005, he “tried to tie together a series of diplomatic and military setbacks that had virtually no connection to one another, from an attack on a Sunni mosque in Iraq to the assassination of Maronite Lebanese political figure [sic].”
– The so-called freedom agenda also takes a few hits. In a familiar refrain, the president argued that “free people are not drawn to violent and malignant ideologies – and most will choose a better way when they are given a chance.”
– However, as Kessler reminds us, “In the two of the most liberal and diverse societies in the Middle East – Lebanon and the Palestinian territories – events have undercut Bush’s argument… Hezbollah has gained power and strength in Lebanon, partly at the ballot box. Meanwhile, Palestinians ousted the Fatah party – which wants to pursue peace with Israel – from the legislature in favor of Hamas, which is committed to Israel’s destruction and is considered a terrorist organization by the State Department.”
– As for the “moderate” governments that the terrorists wish to overthrow, ”Many of the countries that Bush considers ‘moderate’ – such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia – are autocratic dictatorships” whose “Freedom House ratings are virtually indistinguishable from Cuba, Belarus and Burma, which Bush last night listed as nations in desperate need of freedom.”
– Finally, with respect to the president’s assertion that “we have a diplomatic strategy that is rallying the world to join in the fight against extremism,” Kessler notes that “global opinion of U.S. foreign policy has sharply deteriorated in the past two years.” A recent poll found that nearly three-quarters of those surveyed “disapprove of U.S. policies toward Iraq, and nearly half said the United States is playing a mainly negative role in the world.”
Notably, Kessler’s article was not identified as a “News Analysis” – the typical flag that reporters employ when they wish to call attention to the fact that an article in the news portion of the paper (as opposed to the Opinion page) contains opinions. Kessler’s piece did not require such a designation because it was based not on opinion, but rather on a fair and accurate reading of the facts.
Which is more than can be said for the president’s speech.
