Two-bit Bush!! What a funny title!! This editorial opinion is worth reading because it is actally pretty mild but looks at the United States and especially our president in the way most of the rest of the world now sees us. Does everyone know that Japan gave $500 million for the disaster relief, incidentally? I thought that was really gracious:
Two-bit Bush makes his costliest blunder
BRIAN BRADY
"IT IS really important that somebody take the lead in this." At a time of unprecedented international emergency, as Asia groped blindly for salvation from the devastation wrought by the eruption beneath the Indian Ocean, it was comforting last week to hear an American president in statesmanlike, conciliatory mood.
"I think one of the problems is when everybody takes responsibility it’s almost like no one’s responsibility."
Readers who pay close attention to the use of capital versus lower case letters may have noticed that the wise words from the world’s mightiest nation came from an American president and not the American President.
While the world rapidly woke up to the shocking reality of the worst natural disaster for a generation, and Bill Clinton was quickly attempting to plot the way towards recovery, his successor as the most powerful man on the planet remained apparently oblivious to the suffering. Holed up for Christmas on his ranch in Crawford, Texas, a president who famously refuses to take work home with him was reluctant to let international affairs impinge on the most important holiday of the year.
While scores of communities from India to Thailand, Sri Lanka to East Africa struggled to rebuild villages washed away by the tsunami; while the rotting corpses piled up in their thousands and even the survivors were beginning to perish; George Bush remained uncharacteristically silent.
It was three days after the tidal wave struck that Bush finally ventured out to offer his considered reaction to the "loss and grief to the world that is beyond our comprehension". His own staff acknowledged that, for the countries affected, the disaster was "their 9/11".
Yet the man who declared the international war on terror and ordered the assault on Afghanistan within hours of the al-Qaeda attacks is dragging his feet.
Bush, who warned Asian leaders almost immediately after 9/11 that they would be judged by their contribution to the war on terror, waited 72 hours before he called to offer his condolences in the wake of this shocking tragedy. From a trailer outside his ranch, he called the leaders of Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia and India to pledge his support. That support amounted to $35m, barely £18m, a figure dwarfed by the sums pledged by nations including Spain and Japan.
The practical impact of what Bush insists will be "only the beginning" of America’s contribution will be demonstrated in the coming days - the money is unlikely to last for longer than that - as the devastated coastal areas of the disaster zone struggle to rebuild and stave off the new threats of hunger and disease. Any financial error is, however, overshadowed by the colossal political miscalculation of Bush’s handling of this latest global crisis; its repercussions could decide the fate of his foreign policy in a second term he hopes will secure his place in history.
In helping to rescue shattered communities thousands of miles away, Bush has been presented with the opportunity to rebuild relations with many predominantly Muslim countries alienated by the war on terror and the invasion of Iraq. His supporters maintain that he has a compassionate side, that he believes America is a force for good in the world, and not the aggressor it is normally portrayed as. In the early hours of Boxing Day, the President was given the glimpse of a new start in a second term that officially begins in less than a month. But he dropped the ball.
America’s response to the developing emergency in the Indian Ocean was little and late. Bush served notice that he will lead in his second term as he did during his first, with the United States as his over-riding priority.
Although Bush aides last week insisted the delay in responding to the disaster had been caused by the need to assess the full scale of the devastation, it frustrated opponents and aid workers, and moved one official to observe that the gap was "kind of freaky".
The disaster was far away, it was not judged to be as devastating as it eventually proved, and it was not known to have claimed the lives of any Americans. It is clear that the White House fiercely resisted interrupting the holiday period to make any statement in the hours immediately after the tsunami, either to express the President’s condolences or to make clear what contribution the US was making to the relief effort.
The Bush counter-offensive against critics of its "stingy" contribution to the tsunami relief effort thus relied heavily on the fact that America contributed $2.4bn in funds for disaster relief last year, 40% of the global kitty.
Yet when faced with the biggest challenge in living memory, America was surpassed by the likes of Spain. Moreover, Bush lags behind the European Union when it comes to development aid: the $16.2bn donated in 2003 was less than half the EU total. More tellingly, Congress has approved some $13bn for domestic aid related to the hurricanes that hit the country in the summer. At a time when the British public has independently pledged millions to the relief effort, the leader of the richest nation in the world offered the equivalent of two cents per American, per day.
The most instructive comparison, however, is between the amount Bush is prepared to pledge up front to a humanitarian disaster affecting millions of ordinary people, and the billions committed to his expedition in Iraq. The original $35m pledged accounts for four hours’ spending on the US effort in Iraq, which will have cost a total of $210bn by October.
To conclude that the Bush White House simply doesn’t care would appear crude and just a little unfair. Yet this is the reputation that Bush has forged for himself during a zealous three years pursuing US interests, often at the expense of other nations.
Secretary of State Colin Powell hinted that the White House is finally awake to the consequences of the disaster when he expressed his hope that "people will see that the US is willing to reach out to the Muslim world in this time of suffering". Powell’s follow-up announcement, that the US would lead a four-nation group co-ordinating the response to the disaster - only belatedly including the UN - demonstrated a new determination to take control. His impending visit to the disaster zone, along with the President’s brother Jeb, suggests that, finally, the Bush high command, and the administration they dominate, are prepared to use their "bully pulpit" to positive effect. The decision to multiply the original offering to $350m merely underlined the inadequacy of the first response.
But if Bush fails to deliver, or if his efforts are no more than the token contribution of an uninterested leader, it will be used ruthlessly as ammunition by the Islamic fundamentalists he has targeted as the most pernicious enemy of the US way of life.
Leading the relief effort around the Indian Ocean, including Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim nation, would help convince a hostile world that his foreign policy is about more than simply grinding America’s enemies into the dust.
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