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Bush to World: Drop Dead!The president lays an egg at the U.N.

By Fred KaplanPosted Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2003, at 5:23 PM ET

Bully on the pulpitHas an American president ever delivered such a bafflingly impertinent speech before the General Assembly as the one George W. Bush gave this morning?

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Here were the world's foreign ministers and heads of state, anxiously awaiting some sign of an American concession to realism—even the sketchiest outline of a plan to share not just the burden but the power of postwar occupation in Iraq. And Bush gave them nothing, in some ways less than nothing.

In the few seconds he devoted to that subject, he cited only three areas in which the role of the United Nations (or any other nations) should be expanded: writing an Iraqi constitution, training a new corps of civil servants, and supervising elections. None of these notions is new.

Otherwise, Bush's message can be summarized as follows: The U.S.-led occupation authority is doing good work in Iraq; you should come help us; if you don't, you're on the side of the terrorists.

The speech seemed cobbled from the catchphrases of last year's playbook, as if Bush were trying to replicate the success of his previous appearance before the General Assembly—his September 2002 speech, which roused the Security Council to warn Saddam Hussein of "serious consequences"—without showing the slightest recognition that the old words have grown stale and sour.

Bush dredged out the familiar formula—weapons of mass destruction plus terrorism equals the enemy in Iraq—forgetting, or perhaps not caring, that it didn't persuade the United Nations back in November, when Saddam was still in power, and couldn't hope to win backers now.

He described the guerrilla war, still ongoing, as a battle against "terrorists and holdouts of the previous regime"—ignoring a recent finding of the U.S. intelligence community that the main, and most rapidly growing, threat these days comes from ordinary Iraqis, resentful of the occupation.

He laid out the context of the battle as a contest between "those who work for peaceful change and those who adopt the methods of gangsters." Yet it is hard to see how Bush's pre-emptive-war doctrine fits the former category, and it's painful to observe that many Iraqis would say the U.S. occupation—whose soldiers have pounded down so many doors in the middle of the night—fits the latter.

He acknowledged no mistakes, either in the intelligence that preceded the war or in the planning (or lack thereof) that followed it.

He did acknowledge that "some of the sovereign nations of this assembly disagreed" with his decision to go to war, but added that it is time to move on. "Every young democracy needs the help of friends," he said. "All nations of goodwill should step forward and provide that support."

He painted the United States as following the true principles of the U.N. charter, which call on all nations to "stand with the people of Afghanistan and Iraq," as they build freedom. As for a timetable for turning over power, he said only that the process should be "neither hurried nor delayed."

"The United States of America is committed to the U.N.," Bush added, "by giving meaning to its ideals"—but not, apparently, by sharing authority with its constituents.

Bush spent the remainder of the speech exhorting his fellow leaders to join forces against nuclear proliferation, AIDS, and the international sex-slave trade. Such sentiments would be inoffensively bromidic in a typical address before the General Assembly. But Bush cheapened the causes by linking them with the unfinished business in Iraq. All of these issues, he said in his conclusion—Iraq, terrorism, and WMD, as well as AIDS and teen sex-slaves—require "urgent attention and moral clarity."

The rest of the world's leaders, who had remained conspicuously silent throughout the speech, greeted its conclusion with, at best, polite applause, which is the most it deserved. By comparison, the droningly convoluted speech that followed, by French President Jacques Chirac, was a model of perspicacity.

One section of Bush's speech is worth very serious note. "Success of a free Iraq," he said, "will be watched and noted throughout the region." A free and democratic Iraq would provide a shining example that could transform the Middle East, and "a transformed Middle East would benefit the entire world."

Bush is absolutely right on this point, which is why he needs to get over his hang-ups about France, the Security Council, and the diplomatic disasters of last November, and to get serious about working out a common solution to the much bigger disaster that looms in Iraq. His speech could, and should, have signaled a new opening. Instead, it seemed to close off every option.

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Fred Kaplan is Slate's "War Stories" columnist and author of 1959: The Year Everything Changed. He can be reached at .

Photograph of President Bush by Ray Stubblebine/Reuters.

COMMENTS

Remarks from the Fray:

The core question is whether giving the UN increased power over the fate of Iraq would actually help to transform Iraq into a stable state.

Bush obviously believes the answer is no - ruling by committee won't help, neither will allowing the UN member states, many of which have ulterior motives, to decide what happens in Iraq.

Now Bush may be right or wrong. Time will tell whether we can do it right under his plan, and, if we go with his plan, we'll never know if the UN would have done a better job.

Nevertheless, given Bush's premise, his speech was exactly the right choice diplomatically.

1) It made clear that the US means well in Iraq, and that we're going to do the job with or without the UN's help, but it did so in a way that wasn't openly confrontational.

2) It also reminded the UN that there are a ton of issues on which the UN wants the US's help: aids, the sex trade, et al. This gentle reminder isn't necessarily a "harmless bromide" or whatever Kaplan calls it - it may well be a simple that the UN depends on the US, and that the UN's ability to accomplish its goals in the future depend on rapprochement with the US.

In short, it was classic diplomacy. A little stick, a little carrot, and a clear statement of our priorities.

--J_Mann

(To reply, click here)

The UN is a failure, a bureaucratic absurdity almost as doomed as the EU. Bush came not to crown the UN with laurels (for doing what?) nor to prostrate himself before its double-speaking hypocrites (hello, Chirac, how's FINA?). He came to bury it; or, rather, bury the notion that it had any relevance in today's world. He did so quite cleverly by calmly asking whether the UN wanted to have any role in making Iraq a better country, or whether it would choose the path of petty vindictiveness and sclerotic tendencies.

Kaplan asks why Bush doesn't swallow his pride, but it's Chirac and co. who all along refused to do anything that might appear to support America's stance vis-à-vis Iraq. Much of this has to do with the dearth of democracies in the UN and the surplus of financial ties with the extinct Saddam regime.

Let's face facts: France needs the UN more than the US needs the UN. One might better question Chirac's motives and aims in vigorously undermining the very institution his small, unimportant country relies on to get its way outside of Brussels…

--Brian-1

(To reply, click here)

Why did Bush give this speech? He won no friends, but then he asked for none. He explained no errors, but then he admitted none. He changed no attitudes, but then he didn't really try.

He gave a speech that might have gone over well as an address to the American people, but the U.N. delegates wanted answers to some very specific questions, and they didn't get those answers today.

In the world of this speech, September 11, 2001 was "yesterday", and Bush just finished waging a successful war with the sanction and support of the United Nations, and was in the process of smoothly and efficiently rebuilding that placid and pacified nation.

If we really inhabited that world, there would be no need for Bush to address the U.N. at all. In the world we inhabit, he should have sent a different message.

The hawks in the Bush Administration still favor a unilateral approach to Iraq, and see no reason to seek or accept any help from the U.N. if it comes with strings attached. They won't be pleased that Bush addressed the United Nations.

The doves in the Bush Administration think that the U.S. is in over its head and needs all the help it can get if the price is bearable. They won't be pleased by the speech either, or by the fact that Bush just said "nucular" on the floor of the U.N.

--Thrasymachus

(To reply, click here)

(9/24)

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