IT WAS an opportunity for mending fences in the search for a new consensus. George W Bush appearing before the United Nations for the first time since flouting the Security Council in going to war against Iraq. Sure, it was never likely to be a love-in given recent US policy, but there was hope that with the death toll mounting in Iraq, and Washington scrambling around for allies to help it shoulder the burden of post-war reconstruction, President Bush might have come to the General Assembly with an olive branch and a hand of reconciliation.
But any hopes of contrition or a conciliation were dashed by an unrepentant speech that hammered home a message that will have driven away any in the chamber that might have been tempted to offer assistance. Yes, he called for a greater UN role in Iraq… “to assist in developing a constitution, training civil servants, and conducting free and fair elections” – i.e. to conduct the nitty-gritty administrative role that the US has no time for or interest in, while working hostage to a political and military power that Washington has no intention of relinquishing.
Nor was there any sense that the president was in any way chastened by the grim realities of post-war Iraq, that he might be willing to tone down the rhetoric to allow hesitant allied nations to come on board, instead delivering a messianic message that all but guarantees the US and Britain will have to fight this fight alone.
“Events during the past two years have set before us the clearest of divides,” he told the UN: “Between those who seek order and those who spread chaos… Between these alternatives there is no neutral ground. All governments that support terror are complicit in a war against civilisation… And all nations that fight terror, as if the lives of their own people depend on it, will earn the favourable judgment of history.”
Basically, if you’re not with us you’re against us, and God have mercy on you.
President Bush may have written off any hope of international assistance in Iraq, accepting US soldiers will return in body bags until election day. Indeed, this was not a speech to the United Nations, it was a speech to the American people, providing a domestic audience the outline of his campaign defence with a robust repetition of the Good-against-Evil theme. The very first words were a reminder of what this was all about, a reminder of September 11, when “New York City became a battlefield and a graveyard and the symbol of an unfinished war”.
Such rhetoric may (or may not) ring a chord in America. At the United Nations, however, it was received with only the merest of polite applause – in stark contrast to the enthusiastic reception for the address by Secretary-general Kofi Annan, which – without mentioning any country by name – warned of the dangers of the “unilateral and lawless use of force, with or without credible justification”.
More, his highlight on poverty addressed the very causes of terror that Bush chose to ignore.
