Foreign policy with hubris

We have a President who can't get enough of campaigning, especially when his audiences are made up of hand-picked cheerleaders. Yesterday he made an appearance in Irvine, CA, where he talked about his foreign policy. Here is what he said:

I base a lot of my foreign policy decisions on some things I think are true. One is I believe there is an Almighty, and secondly, I believe that one of the great gifts of the Almighty is the desire in everybody's soul, regardless of what you look like or where you live, to be free.

This echoes some themes of Enlightenment philosophers, who were mostly Deists (rather than Christians). They believed that people were naturally endowed with certain universal rights. Whether or not one believes the source of those rights to be some mystical higher power (but not necessarily the Christian God) is of little practical importance; either way, human rights = good. But Bush's invocation of the Almighty suggests more of a "God is on my side" kind of justification for foreign interventions.

I believe liberty is universal.

I agree. The problem is, Bush routinely says or does things that contradict this sentiment. Warrantless surveillance, suspension of habeas corpus for detainees, the nullifying of the McCain anti-torture amendment... If Bush really believed liberty was universal, he would not do these things.

I believe people want to be free, and I know that democracies do not war with each other.

But they do.

And I know that the best way to defeat the enemy, and the best way to defeat their ability to exploit hopelessness and despair is to give people a chance to live in a free society.

Defeat the enemy. A vague, amorphous enemy.

You know, the Iraqis went to the polls last December for the third time in one year. Seems like a decade ago, doesn't it?

If this is as much progress as we can expect in a decade, we're in serious trouble.

Seems like it was an eternity ago, that 12 million people defied terrorists, threats... and said: "We want to be free. We're sick and tired of a society that had been suppressed by a brutal tyrant. We want to go to the polls. We want to be self governing." I wasn't surprised. I was pleased but not surprised. If you believe that liberty exists in the soul of each person on the face of the earth, it shouldn't surprise you that given the chance, people will say: "We want to be free."

But is that what the Iraqis were saying? The electoral process was driven from the outside, and a major segment of the population boycotted one of those elections. Ongoing sectarian strife suggests that the Iraqis are also saying that they want to settle grievances through violence, and not through rule of law. And another message that comes out of those elections is that the U.S. wants to legitimize the Iraqi government, which may be at odds with what the Iraqi people want.

And now the role of the United States is to stand by the courageous Iraqis as their democracy develops. It's not easy work.

Nation building is hard.