Bush's U.N. Credibility Gap

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President Bush, however, prudently chose to spend less time making a case against Iran than on trying to frame his Middle East policy as a campaign for democracy in support of the region's long-suffering citizens. "Some have argued that the democratic changes we're seeing in the Middle East are destabilizing the region," Bush noted. "This argument rests on a false assumption, that the Middle East was stable to begin with. The reality is that the stability we thought we saw in the Middle East was a mirage. For decades, millions of men and women in the region have been trapped in oppression and hopelessness. And these conditions left a generation disillusioned, and made this region a breeding ground for extremism."

But the very Arab moderates on whose behalf President Bush claims to be fighting are often among the strongest critics of his policies, warning that by pursuing democracy through military action, the U.S. may be breeding more extremism than progress. There's also the delicate matter of accepting democracy's outcome when it goes against U.S. preferences. Although the Administration has done that in Iraq — supporting an elected government closer to Iran than it is to Washington — in the Palestinian territories it initially did just the opposite, seeking to overthrow the newly elected Hamas government though a financial blockade. Bush's suggestion Tuesday that "the world is waiting to see whether the Hamas government will follow through on its promises [of ending corruption and improving the lives of the Palestinian people], or pursue an extremist agenda" would certainly have been greeted with skepticism by many in the region, who feel that Hamas's ability to fulfill its election promises is entirely dependent on the U.S. and Israel lifting their financial blockade on the Palestinian Authority.

Nor have the U.N. delegates forgotten that the same hopeful new Middle East of which President Bush spoke was the reason offered by his Administration for refusing, for weeks, to call a halt to the Israeli military actions against Hizballah in Lebanon which destroyed much of Lebanon's infrastructure. The military campaign was necessary, U.S. officials said, to help rid Lebanon of Hizballah's independent armed capability — even though the elected, moderate government of Lebanon, on which Bush heaped praise during his U.N. speech, was among those pleading with the U.S. call an immediate cease-fire.

President Bush did his best at the U.N. to paint the U.S. as a friend of the Arab world's huddled masses. But events in Iraq, in the Palestinian territories and in Lebanon all have dampened prospects that those huddled masses will accept the President as their champion.