Bush Gives up on Democracy

In January, I lamented President Bush's drifting away from his democracy agenda. Sadly, it now appears that Bush has given up entirely on spreading democracy. In doing so, he has abandoned one of the few positive and principled elements left in U.S. foreign policy. As the article linked above shows, champions of freedom and democracy in Egypt, and presumably elsewhere, have lost their trust in the U.S. All this is likely to do is to push opponents of autocratic regimes in the middle east and elsewhere to join anti-U.S. opposition groups instead of pro-oppostion groups. Notably, many of these anti-U.S. opposition groups seem to be the terrorists that the U.S. is fighting. E.g. Osama bin Laden started out as a anti-Saudi dissident who has decided to fight the U.S. as a prerequisite to "liberating" Saudi Arabia.

The article also notes the following about the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq:

Rather than inspiring change, the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq prompted people to pour into the streets in paroxysms of anti-American resentment. Rice's statements [demanding democratization of Egypt], while welcomed in some quarters, suggested to many a teacher scolding a pupil, another humiliating image for a country seized by perceptions of its own weakness and what many view as Egypt's slavish obedience to U.S. policy.

The United States, by default, is viewed with suspicion and hatred in the middle east and its actions tend to be assumed to be negative. If the U.S. continues to sacrifice the forces of freedom elsewhere in the world for the sake of stability, more of the above can likely be expected.