By Jessica Reed
Yesterday Geroge W. Bush adressed the UN Assembly, cleverly openning his speech reminiscing about 9/11 and reminding everyone that the 'enemies of humanity' are still at large. He also conveniently pointed out the 'group of extremists deliberately provoked a terrible conflict in Lebanon', emphasizing the fact that an 'ideological war' was currently taking place.
In over 6 years in office, Bush's carefully crafted speeches haven't changed much in nature: the old dichotomy between the 'good' and the 'bad' is still here, and so is the 'us against them rethoric'. The build up of aggressive foreign policies based and marketed on the concept of fear is something he and his entourage of evangelical speechwriters have become experts at over the years:
At the start of the 21st century, it is clear that the world is engaged in a great ideological struggle, between extremists who use terror as a weapon to create fear, and moderate people who work for peace.
The speech itself sounds like a walking cliche recycling old semantics until the audience finds itself brainwashed: the 'War on terror', the desirable Western way of life, the evil extremists, the American people 'desiring peace', all these terms are used à outrance; the result is unfortunately infantilising and condescending.
All of this is made even more insulting by the fact that shortly before his speech, Bush quietly withheld payments -for the fifth consecutive year- to the United Nations Fund for Population Activities. He also appointed Andrew Natsios as the Presidential Special Envoy in Darfur, a move supported by Oxfam. Alas, critics were quick to point out that Natsios previously argued against giving antiretroviral treatment to millions of Africans affected by HIV (because if you ask " Africans to take their drugs at a certain time of day, they do not know what you are talking about.") According to the blog Think Progress, Natsios also was the "director of U.S. Agency for International Development Natsios promised that the U.S. contribution to reconstruction of Iraq would be no more that $1.6 billion" (the cost is now said to be between 50 and 100 billions". [via Metafilter]
Let's hope that this time around Bush won't have to congratulate Natsios like he congratulated FEMA's Michael D. Brown - for doing a "heck of a job".
