Comments on the 2004 State of the Union Address

There were plenty of problems with the speech but I will focus on just this part:

“Nine months of intense negotiations involving the United States and Great Britain succeeded with Libya, while 12 years of diplomacy with Iraq did not. And one reason is clear: For diplomacy to be effective, words must be credible -- and no one can now doubt the word of America.” -G.W. Bush, State of the Union, January 20, 2004.

What is “12 years of diplomacy with Iraq”? This must be Orwellian doublespeak that refers to the 12 years of strangling economic sanctions, combined with occasional cruise missile strikes, and the almost daily bombings from U.S. warplanes patrolling the illegal “no-fly” zones. With diplomacy like this, who needs wars? No wonder Mr. Bush admits that this “diplomacy” failed.

As far as doubting the word of America, forget the rest of the world for a moment. There are plenty of Americans who don’t trust the word of their own government, myself included. The problem here is that some of America’s words (threats) are credible, and some are not. America threatened to invade Iraq, and it did. However, America claimed Iraq had WMD, but none have yet been found. Now if you consider people in the rest of the world, they are probably not as easily misled as the average TV-watching American. They will continue to doubt the word of America until they have reason not to, unless their country is threatened by a U.S. military invasion.

Peace, Love, Truth and Wisdom,

Don

Wednesday, January 21, 2004