{"id":192,"date":"2003-11-21T04:23:19","date_gmt":"2003-11-21T09:23:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2003\/11\/bush_america\/"},"modified":"2003-11-21T04:23:19","modified_gmt":"2003-11-21T09:23:19","slug":"bush_america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2003\/11\/bush_america\/","title":{"rendered":"Bush ≠ America"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, when asked about the thousands of people demonstrating against him<\/a>, President Bush was in his typical memorized-response-regardless-of-the-question mode<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Q: Mr. President, if I could ask you, with thousands on the street — with thousands marching on the streets today here in London, a free nation, what is your conclusion as to why apparently so many free citizens fear you and even hate you?
\nPRESIDENT BUSH: I’d say freedom is beautiful. It’s a fantastic thing to come to a country where people are able to express their views.
\nQ: Why do they hate you, Mr. President? Why do they hate you in such numbers?
\nPRESIDENT BUSH: I don’t know that they do. All I know is that it’s — that people in Baghdad, for example, weren’t allowed to do this up until recent history. They’re not spending a lot of time in North Korea protesting the current leadership. Freedom is a wonderful thing, and I respect that. I fully understand people don’t agree with war. But I hope they agree with peace and freedom and liberty. I hope they care deeply about the fact that when we find suffering and torture and mass graves, we weep for the citizens that are being brutalized by tyrants.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To be fair, \ufffdwhy does X hate you?\ufffd is a rather awkward question, but one an America president ought to be able to handle.
\nAlthough Bush was trying to dodge the issue of his cool reception, his media allies back across the pond were doing their best to downplay the demonstrations by discrediting the messengers. This tactic had two main themes: the protestors are (1) far-left communist\/anarchist radicals (if not terrorists themselves), who are (2) anti-American.
\nAnytime there\ufffds a large, public demonstration, it\ufffds likely to attract the people who are most disgruntled with society. There\ufffds no question that some people involved in this rally are out on the political fringe. But I\ufffdve haven\ufffdt seen any reporting indicating that such elements were anything more than a small minority of those demonstrating. As far as I could tell, the rally included plenty of rank-and-file Britons.
\nThe second point is even more dishonest. Note to right-wing broadcasters: Being anti-Bush does not equal being anti-American. A majority of Europeans, even those in \ufffdOld Europe,\ufffd have a favorable opinion of America, and more importantly, American ideals. The thing that has turned them off is Bush\ufffds reckless unilateral approach to policy, where diplomacy has become an afterthought.
\nThe right-wing talking heads want to obscure this distinction; they want to deflect frustration toward the symptoms of the problem, away from the problem itself. Don\ufffdt be fooled. We haven\ufffdt yet burned all the bridges with our long-standing allies. There\ufffds still an opportunity for reconciliation\ufffdback to the point where foreign masses welcome<\/i> an American president. But we can\ufffdt continue down the path we\ufffdre on. It leads to even greater international disdain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, when asked about the thousands of people demonstrating against him, President Bush was in his typical memorized-response-regardless-of-the-question mode: Q: Mr. President, if I could ask you, with thousands on the street — with thousands marching on the streets today here in London, a free nation, what is your conclusion as to why apparently so […]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-192","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}