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Bush tour fails to impress Arab press
Abu Dhabi, 2008 Jan 14, Al-Manar
Arab newspapers on Monday accused US President George W. Bush of trotting out the "old, old story" of democracy and threatening Iran with the same rhetoric that preceded the Iraq invasion.
Bush's keynote speech in Abu Dhabi was "a display of the fairly muddled thinking behind the current foreign policy of the United States", said the Saudi Gazette. "The part about (Iran) intimidating neighbors with alarming rhetoric sounds suspiciously like the US these days, though the Bush administration uses its alarming rhetoric - followed by invasion - to intimidate countries." It added: "And still, despite the heightened rhetoric, accusations and threats, the US refuses to hold direct talks with a country in which it has meddled for half a century. If this is the Bush definition of diplomacy, he needs to pick up a dictionary."
The United Arab Emirates newspaper, Gulf News, was equally unimpressed with Bush's Middle East tour on the final year of his eight-year presidency. Its edition was headlined: "Bush tells us the old, old story."
His speech in the Emirati capital on Sunday "failed to offer any specific policies, preferring to repeat a simplistic insistence on the introduction of democracy, freedom and justice in the region." Bush's search for regime change in Iran was in stark contrast to the "more measured Arab approach" which attempts to "engage Iran in dialogue and work to find a mutual solution to differences", said the Gulf News.
Saudi Arabia's Al-Watan said Bush needed to listen more to the people of the Gulf kingdom. "Saudi Arabia has constantly drawn the attention of successive American administrations, and particularly that of George W. Bush, on the errors that they have committed in the Middle East," it said. Al-Watan pointed to Washington's "flagrant alignment with Israel, right up to its attitude towards Iran, passing by the invasion of Iraq."
Syrian official newspapers slammed Bush for his attempts to rally Arab allies around his policy of hostility toward Tehran. "In asserting the security of Israel and trying to mobilize Arab hostility against Iran, Bush is drawing up a project of war," said the official daily Ath-Thawra. "When Bush evokes the security of the Hebrew state... that signifies the suppression of the right of return of Palestinians" to the homes they fled after Israel was established in 1948, it added.
Al-Baath denounced Bush as the "Godfather of Abu Ghraib democracy" - referring to the prison outside Baghdad where US troops sexually and physically abused inmates. The government's Tishrin daily addressed Bush directly, branding him an enemy of the Arabs, with "a million Iraqis having perished by the gunfire of the (American) army or because of it."
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