"Heck of a job Bushie"

Christopher Dickey's Shadowland via Newsweek has helped this country Scot understand much about our international world. Today he tackles the Arab response to last night's "speech" with an entry begining with, "Bush’s State of the Union Message confirmed the Arab world’s view of the U.S. president as a caricature who talks about strength and determination while projecting an image of stubbornness and confusion."

What I take out of the article is the damage this administration has actually caused to the legimate (that's a reality-based word for any Bu$hCo apologists that are still angling toward what has lately been labeled by Colbert as "truthiness"!) goal of spreading democracy. Mr. Dickey writes (with my emphasis supplied to what I think is worthy of note) the following:

"Journalists from the region are trapped in a sort of twilight zone between these two relentlessly opposite versions of the past and proclamations about the future. "You are caught between two extremes and neither is right," says Ayman Safadi, editor in chief of Jordan's Al Ghad newspaper. The United States comes with its agenda, but with no real understanding, while the old guard in the Middle East is unwilling to admit it has failed, decade after decade, to deliver on its hollow promises of dignity and progress. In the midst of contradictions, people cling to traditions "in their bubble of anachronism," says Safadi. Those who are attacked or denigrated by the Bush administration, like the Baathist regime in Syria, find themselves lionized by the Arab public. Those applauded by Washington are dismissed as pawns. The result on the ground is often the opposite of the Bush administration's stated desires. "Democracy has a new enemy in the region, which is the support [for democracy] by the United States of America," says Safadi." .... "Ultimately, democracy is taught better by example than by declaration, and here, too, the Bush administration has failed in the eyes of many Arabs and Muslims. It's not that people in Iraq or Lebanon, Iran or Egypt do not want a voice in their governments, clearly they do. And they want change. They pray for it. But none of the changes they've been shown so far have been adequate to their hopes. Nor has their ever-growing contact with truth and justice the American way led them to see it as a shining example. The essence of democracy is public accountability. Bush famously said after the 2004 elections, when the Iraq debacle was clear for the world to see, that he'd had his "accountability moment" and been vindicated by popular vote. Perhaps so. But since then, tolerance in the Middle East for his preaching, or that of the American public, is very low, leaving Arabs and Muslims to continue searching elsewhere for the answers to their prayers."