Bush vs. Putin: What a Difference!

On one side, a President preaches pragmatism and harmony in international relations, showing a track record on domestic policy that is second to none. In the opposite camp, there was more Bushspeak in the State of the Union address, which has become a masturbatory practice aimed at producing a mass collective orgasm of self-righteousness.

The key elements of President Putin’s discourse on Tuesday morning were the respect for international law, non-discriminatory international relations, honoring the territorial integrity of fellow members of the international community, and a domestic policy based on responsibility, pragmatism and competence.

Some key words from George Bush’s State of the Union address on January 31 were “rage,” “enemies,” “battlefield,” “hatred” and “fear,” five key words which ably summarize the policies of the Bush regime.

One might expect a President of the United States of America to focus his State of the Union speech on well … the state of the union. Not so for Bush, who took just a few seconds to launch into a misguided discourse about how important America’s “leadership” of the international community is to defending the nation.

By stating this, George Bush pits his country against – and not with – the international community, because this community is based on the notion of maintaining brotherly relations as equals. No one has requested a bullying Big Brother to “lead” them.

Not surprisingly, practically the first utterance of his speech was about September 11th, 2001. Beyond this outrage against humanity, there was no mention of the thousands of innocent civilians in other countries murdered by the armed forces of Commander-in-Chief George Bush; no mention of the military targeting of civilian infrastructure; no mention of the widespread practice of torture; the concentration camps; the disrespect for international law.

Instead, what we get from George Bush are absurd, puerile statements such as: “At the start of 2006, more than half the people of our world live in democratic nations. And we do not forget the other half – in places like Syria, Burma, Zimbabwe, North Korea and Iran …”

For Mr. Bush’s information, “places like” Iran don’t set up concentration camps in foreign lands, “places like” North Korea don’t invade sovereign nations outside the auspices of international law, “places like” Syria do not use weapons of mass destruction against civilians, “places like” Zimbabwe do not lie at the U.N. and “places like” Burma (The Myanmar Republic for those who know what they’re talking about) don’t invade their neighbors, wire up people’s testicles with electrodes, sodomize prisoners or set dogs on them.

If this is what can be called spreading freedom and democracy to protect the good people of the United States, and that Americans voted for such practices, then the Bush regime has created a chasm between Americans and the rest of the world. Let us describe this policy accurately, and for what it is: It is a unilateral policy of aggression which purports to set the United States of America above the rest of the international community, in a position where Washington does what it likes, when it likes and as it likes, siphoning off or controlling the world’s resources for its own benefit.

This is not a discussion among equals, all loved and respected members of any community. It is the discourse of a pariah state, one whose arrogance and self-righteousness long ago clouded its vision and which will eventually lead to its downfall.

A fitting epitaph to the Bush regime is the fact that many Latin Americans are striving to create the awareness in the international community that being “American” is not the same as being from the United States.

After sullying the name of his own country, after lying to his people and the international community, after disrespecting international law, George W. Bush has managed to make hundreds of millions of people ashamed to call themselves “Americans.”