More on the Inaugural Speech

Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria has a more balanced analysis of the speech. The substance of the speech wasn't bad. The problem is that we have been doing the opposite of championing freedom with regards to Russia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, Taiwan, Uzbekistan...
Zakaria does not think that the proper way to interact with these countries is a simple matter.

I do not mean to suggest that in all these cases the president should invade or break ranks with or even condemn these leaders. There are understandable reasons why the United States must look after its security, as well as its political and economic concerns. But President Bush has suggested in his speech that there is no conflict between America’s ideals and its interests. The record of his administration—as all previous ones—highlights the opposite.

Dealing with this conflict between ideals and interests is not easy. Our hypocrisy is a major reason the "coalition of the willing" is a joke. It is extremely shortsighted that so much of Europe seems to prefer a US failure in Iraq to helping establish a just and secure Iraqi government, but we are not doing much to make it easier to be joined by France and Germany and Spain and...

While Bush has been visionary in his goals, he has not provided much practical wisdom on how to attain them in a complex world. This lack of attention to the long, hard slog of actually promoting democracy might explain why things have gone so poorly in the most important practical application of the Bush Doctrine so far—Iraq. Convinced that bringing freedom to a country meant simply getting rid of the tyrant, the Bush administration seems to have done virtually no serious postwar planning to keep law and order, let alone to build the institutions of a democratic state. If this sounds like an exaggeration, consider the extraordinary words in the “after-action report” of the most important division of the American Army in Iraq, the Third Infantry Division, quoted in a recent essay by Michael O’Hanlon. It reads: “Higher headquarters did not provide the Third Infantry Division (Mechanized) with a plan for Phase IV [the postwar phase]. As a result, Third Infantry Division transitioned into Phase IV in the absence of guidance.”

...For much of the world, the great challenge today is civil strife, extreme poverty and disease, which overwhelms not only democracy but order itself. It is not that such societies are unconcerned about freedom. Everyone, everywhere, would choose to control his own destiny. But this does not mean as much when the basic order that precedes civilized life is threatened, and disease and death are the most pressing daily concern. Much of Africa is reasonably free, holds elections and is far more open than ever before. The great challenge in, say, Senegal and Namibia is not freedom but an effective state. The author of American liberty, James Madison, wrote in The Federalist papers that “in framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” Order and then liberty (we might have remembered this in Iraq).

The writing is on the wall. The remaining tyrannies will eventually perish. And the world will move slowly toward greater and greater freedom. The United States is right to push this trend forward. The president is wise to articulate the path ahead. But we should also note the trends toward chaos, plague and poverty, which consume the attentions of much of the world. These are also great evils, and we should propose ways to lead the world in tackling them. That, too, would make for an interesting and important speech.