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At the end of Bush's run, a vision unrealized
By Laura Ofobike
Beacon Journal chief editorial writer
Published on Tuesday, Jan 13, 2009
President Bush didn't create a ''democracy czar.'' Perhaps he should have, to give prominence to the dramatic sweep of the vision for freedom he laid out.
''The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world,'' the president declared during his second Inaugural Address four years ago.
''It is the policy of the United States,'' he said, ''to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.''
Bold stuff. (Can you say presumptious? Whatever one might say about him, it won't be that this Bush lacked the vision thing.)
As time ticks out on his presidency, the Bush freedom doctrine, if one might call it that, would appear not to have advanced the cause of freedom and democracy in a direction that would ultimately loosen the grip of tyranny. In its annual report on freedom, Freedom House, a nongovernmental organization dedicated to expanding political rights and civil liberties, concluded from its indicators that ''freedom retreated in much of the world in 2008, the third year of global decline.''
Bush's second inaugural wound down with a paean to freedom as stirring as any one might hear:
''We go forward with complete confidence in the eventual triumph of freedom. Not because history runs on the wheels of inevitability; it is human choices that move events. Not because we consider ourselves a chosen nation; God moves and chooses as he wills.
''We have confidence because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger in dark places, the longing of the soul. When our Founders declared a new order of the ages, when soldiers died in wave upon wave for a union based on liberty, when citizens marched in peaceful outrage under the banner 'Freedom Now' — they were acting on an ancient hope that is meant to be fulfilled. History has an ebb and flow of justice, but history also has a visible direction, set by liberty and the Author of Liberty. . . . America, in this young century, proclaims liberty throughout all the world, and to all the inhabitants thereof.''
As another president prepares to mount the stage, the question embedded in Bush's agenda for freedom remains as relevant as ever. The question is: How? How does one pull it off? How does America support the growth of this ancient hope, this freedom (by way of democracy) that the Author of Liberty presumably has destined to be fulfilled in every nation and culture?
Bush has supplied some answers during his time in office.
He tried to speed freedom and democracy along with blasts of military shock and not a little awe in Iraq, with the hope to deliver a government and society that would be a model of democratic freedom in the Middle East.
The results in Iraq have not been glorious exactly, and the price has been steep. Although political terror and violence have declined, Iraq retains its Not Free status, says the latest Freedom House report.
Elsewhere, tightening the screws has backfired. The pressure on the Palestinian Authority to hold free and fair elections did produce free-and-fair results in 2006 unlike anything the Bush administration wanted — the election of the ferociously anti-Israel Hamas. Which situation only drove the midwife in chief of world democracy into a role of conspiring to strangle at birth the baby its efforts delivered.
With Cuba, tightening the embargoes of past years has not caused democracy to flower visibly on the island.
Bush has tried cheerleading and support, too, when citizens have marched in peaceful outrage under the banner Freedom Now — as in the ''Orange Revolution'' in Ukraine in 2004, and the ''Rose Revolution'' in Georgia before that. Disillusion with leaders who promised change but didn't deliver has dimmed high hopes.
Bush has also tried passing out carrots, again with mixed results. In the poorer regions of the world, countries seeking development funds from the White House's Millennium Challenge Account are rated on three sets of criteria, one of which is ''Ruling Justly.'' The measures include freedom of expression; the rule of law and human rights; the ability to form political parties and compete freely in elections and the prevalence of free and fair election to offices with real power.
If expanding freedom is the best hope for peace — Bush is right on that — then Barack Obama faces the task to find more effective means of seeding democracy. Ending tyranny will require a much higher Authority.
Ofobike is the Beacon Journal chief editorial writer. She can be reached at 330-996-3513 or by e-mail at lofobike@thebeaconjournal.com
President Bush didn't create a ''democracy czar.'' Perhaps he should have, to give prominence to the dramatic sweep of the vision for freedom he laid out.
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