Al Jazeera Watch: Bush Speech

The headline on Al Jazeera's Web site shouldn't surprise anyone:

Arabs Wary of Bush 'Freedom' Speech

Why do the despots and despotic imams, and the downtrodden and exploited they rule over, so fear this word, "freedom?" Let Al Jazeera illuminate:

An Arab professor of political science drew parallels between the words of Bush and Usama bin Ladin, saying the president had made the word freedom banal in the same way as the al-Qaida leader had the word jihad. "The two men have both invoked their favourite concepts without ever putting them into practice," Assad Abu Khalil, who works in the United States, told Aljazeera. ... [For a look at this shaggy Cal State Stanislaus political science prof and an insight into his anti-American philosophy, click here.]

"The export of democracy is in no way a military operation." ...

Egyptian writer and analyst Abd al-Karim al-Karimi said Bush's lavish "coronation ceremony" was a throwback to the colonial era [Well, it's really a throwback to Clinton's second coronation, when adjusted for inflation] and lambasted the president's address for promoting democracy without content. "All the world talks about liberty, but what liberty is it? What is the meaning of the democracy and the political liberties that the United States wants to impose in the Middle East? Bush does not say," he told Egyptian television.

For Iraqi analyst Abd al-Hussain Shaaban the US administration has lost its credibility to promote democracy after launching an invasion of Iraq that two years on has left the country lacking the most basic security. "The United States is closing its eyes towards dictators who serve its own interests but attacks those that damage it," he added, in a reference to key US ally Saudi Arabia. "The fact that Iraq is in chaos and under military occupation does not bode well for democracy coming to the country and to the Middle East." [Interesting that the leader of the Arab Organization for Human Rights didn't see fit to comment on Hussein's record.]