Analysis: “Presidential inauguration speeches, especially in time of war, spark intense personal and political passions,” says the Christian Science Monitor, one of thousands of media outlets reporting US President George W Bush’s inaugural speech.
International analysts, politicians and media all have their own take on the speech, delivered Friday, which in their defence was based heavily on foreign policy and which European newspapers, as expected, lead the charge in adopting a sarcastic and fatalistic tone.
 President Bush gestures the ‘Hook ’em, Horns’ salute of the U Texas Longhorns, which got lost in translation in Norway where shocked people interpreted it as a salute to Satan. (pic: AAP) |
In Germany, the left-wing Die Tageszeitung greeted Mr Bush’s inauguration with a sharp barb towards empire-building.
“The message from this coronation is clear: in line with its first mandate and armed with even more self-confidence, this administration will do what it deems to be right without being deflected by anyone else,” the paper says.
In France, both the conservative newspaper Le Figaro and the popular daily Le Parisien described Mr Bush’s address as having “messianic” overtones, particularly on bringing freedom to nations around the world.
“Bush has organized his second term along messianic lines that make him happier than the day-to-day management of the details of his presidency,” Le Parisien writes.
In Italy, the left-leaning La Repubblica says Bush’s inauguration was “the climax for a quiet man, sitting on a throne and watching a world that looks back at him with concern.”
The address undoubtedly leaves most analysts pondering the realpolitik implications of Bush’s vow to promote democratic movements across the globe as a means to isolate and eradicate terrorism. Adopting the words ‘liberty’ and ‘freedom’ as justifications, for alternately, peace and war, is an inescapable reading of the Bush speech.
Surprisingly on his own soil, the Los Angeles Times rang an alarm bell on Mr Bush’s rhetoric.
“There are reasons to be impressed by Bush’s new doctrine. There are also reasons to be very afraid,” says the pro-Democrat LA Times, a day after the Republican launched his second term with a global campaign to expand democracy.
Perhaps the most telling phrase by Bush was “The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands.”
Kenya’s Nation, and Ireland’s Irish Independent bookend the range of international response to the specific theme of American liberty gone global.
As the Nation points out, Mr Bush’s speech focuses on the “power of freedom”, saying that the best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world. On that, not many people will disagree, says the Nation. But “The differences are over what he understands by ‘freedom’ and how the benefits of democracy should be spread in the world, or indeed whether it is any country’s business to export democracy to others”, the paper says.
The Irish Independent, on the other hand, quite simply nailed the tenor of the speech in the form that Mr Bush intended, addressing his own nation. “At times it sounded more like a sermon than a speech. Mr. Bush may not be much of a speaker. But sometimes the message is more important than eloquence and what he had to say yesterday had the power of real conviction.”
As Bush applied Abraham Lincoln’s words, “those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and, under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it” to his own phrase “the rulers of outlaw regimes,” The Toronto Star just snapped.
It called such language “unabashedly aggressive,” and though “delivered from the west steps of the US Capitol… (was) tailored for world capitals.”
And the press in Turkey, a NATO ally of Washington, reacted skeptically to Mr Bush’s passing references in his speech to religious diversity.
“I’m afraid that even if Bush started reading the Koran in Arabic, he would never succeed in winning the hearts of anyone in the Muslim world,” wrote Murat Yetkin in the newspaper Radikal, summing up widespread skepticism in Muslim society at Bush’s efforts to make-over his international image.
Overall though, most media sources regard the fact that Iraq was not once mentioned in name was what President Bush’s inaugural speech was really about.
Friday’s lead editorial in The Wall Street Journal approvingly sets the scene for the foreign reader.
“The entire speech was about Iraq, as a way of explaining to Americans why the sacrifice our troops are making there is justified.”
The Corriere della Sera, Italy’s biggest circulation daily, says that while Mr Bush savors his second term as president, “a good part of American society believes the administration has no clue as to how to get out of the Iraqi imbroglio.”
Missing the point, this was probably why the president emphasised an offensive US foreign policy in the address.
The left of centre British daily The Guardian summed up world concern in a commentary under the headline “Fireworks in Washington, despair around the world.”
It compared the massive fireworks display used in the inauguration celebration to the ordinance US “occupation forces” would expend in Iraq over a 24 hour period.
“The contrasts between this uninhibited triumphalism and the real world are as wide as the American continent,” it says.
And finally, offering a decidedly longer view of history, namely its own, China’s official newspaper, People’s Daily, warned against American historical intent.
“No banquet under the sun will last forever. After the firework fades away Washington is still under a dark sky. The sole superpower sends a sense of inauspiciousness to the world when its president is inaugurated under wartime security standards: America, where (are) you heading?”
The People’s Daily then offered its readers “a history lesson on the American character”, says the Christian Science Monitor. In translations by the paper, it began with the opener “Judging from Bush’s inauguration theme in 2005, being morally conceited and militarily aggressive are two major elements of American nationalism.”
Following the first wave of world reactions to US president’s speech, the US administration has laboured to clarify President Bush’s newly launched war on global tyranny.
Spokesman Richard Boucher says the democracy drive “doesn’t mean we abandon our friends. But many of our friends realize it’s time for them to change anyway, and they are, indeed, looking at making change within their own societies.”
Whether this is done with advanced weaponry, covert insurgency or high-level diplomacy, the rest of the world is now on-watch for what this wartime president will do next.
– With additional reporting by Agence France-Presse and Christian Science Monitor
