Adonis Diaries

George W. Bush explains: “How I spread liberty”

How the campaign of Bush Junior for spreading  liberty around the world unfolded?

This post is a short review of a chapter in the autobiographical book “Decisive moments: GW.Bush”

In the speech of his second investiture, GW.Bush said: “We have recognized our vulnerability after 9/11/2001. We got intimate with the source of this deep violence.  As long as there are resentment and tyranny around the world, proper to the ideologies that feed on hate and excuse the assassin, violence will be born, will multiply with destructive power…The only force to vanquish tyranny is human liberty.  Survival of liberty in our country depends more and more on liberty in other nations.. Peace cannot take hold unless the spirit of liberty is disseminated everywhere by strengthening democratic institutions…”

Liberty is not an exclusive  USA value, but a universal value. Liberty is not imposed but selected among other values. A tyrannical government resembles a soldier constantly pointing his arm on a prisoner: Invariable, the arm of the tyrant will feel exhausted and numb, and the prisoner escapes.

We had to implant liberty by supporting governments attempting to install democratic institutions such as in the Palestinian occupied territories, Lebanon, Georgia, and Ukraine.  We encouraged reform movements in Iran, Syria, North Korea and Venezuela. We will be steadfast in maintaining our strategic relations with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Russia, and China (all of them trying to install democratic processes?) 

The “Bush Doctrine” would not distinguish between terrorist movements and country hosting these movements; we had to strike first before terrorist activities invade our country. The massive waves of liberty that submerged the world in the second half of the 20th century ignored the Middle-East region. The 2002 UN report on human development stated that one out of three “Arabs”  illiterate; joblessness is over 15%; less than 1% had access to Internet; mortality of mothers were higher than the least developed countries; economic return per individual was minimal…The Arab researchers who wrote this report attributed the causes to lack of knowledge, women insufficiently responsible, and total absence of liberty.

“I refused to admit a moral equivalence between Palestinian suicide attacks and the disproportional military responses of Israel to “protecting its innocent civilians”. After 9/11, my opinion got affirmed that States have the right to defend against further terrorist attacks… I had lost confidence in the promises of Yasser Arafat (Is anyone surprised in this excuse? While the written guarantees of the US to Arafat for the safety of the unarmed Palestinians in camps were never applied? For example, the genocide in the camps of Sabra and Chatila in 1982 by Israel.)

I gave Ariel Sharon my assent for constructing a separation wall (Wall of Shame) between the occupied Palestinian territories and Israel: I believed that this wall will prevent Palestinians to trespass into Israel. After I received vehement reproach from Arabic leaders, I warned Sharon: “You have to know when to stop your execessive military responses”, but Sharon refused to budge in surrounding the headquarter of Arafat in Ramallah.

The more I thought of the troubles in the Middle East, the more I was convinced that the fundamental culprit is lack of liberty in the occupied Palestinian territories. Without a recognized State, the Palestinians could not find their place in the world community; as long as the Palestinians have no say in their future, the extremist elements were going to fill the void; without legitimate leaders, democratically elected, dedicated to fighting extremist movement, peace with Israel will be compromised… I was the first US President demanding a recognized Palestinian State by the UN…

In 2007, Olmert PM of Israel called me and said: “George, I am asking you to bomb Syria Nuclear site”  I had received the report a short while ago. I replied: “Thank you for bringing up the problem. Give me some time to compulse the pieces of intelligence that I got.” I convoqued the national security team. There was a problem bombing a sovereign State without prior warning, and there were no justifications for the consequences.

Mike Hayden, director of the CIA, confirmed that the analysis showed a nuclear site, but no locations of the installation for the transformation of plutonium, he could not affirm that Syria was launching a nuclear weapon. I opted to pressure Syria to admit inspection of the international agency AIEA and relayed my decision to Olmert. Olmert was greatly deceived and retorted: “This situation hits Israel where it is the most fragile. Iwill be frank and to the point: Your strategy worries me enormously.”

On September 6, 2007, Israel demolished the site.  Olmert failed to wait for my green light; he desired that the instigator of the operation be kept secret from the media for fear of Syria retaliations.  The irony was that Bashar al Assad kept this operation under total control from the media.

(To be continued)

Note: GW.Bush tried to spread his version of “liberty” in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Iran, North Korea, China…He failed to mention what he did to spread liberty in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Morocco, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Yemen…After the “Arab Spring uprising”, do you believe that Bush Jr. would have given priority to spreading liberty within the States allied to the US foreign policies? We all know that the “axe of evil” in the constant US foreign policies in the Greater Middle East is composed of States refusing Israel expansionist policies in the region.  It is stupid for this conclusion to be so simple and one-dimensional, but the persistent evidence and practices point to that direction.