President Bush addressed the U.N. General Assembly yesterday. And it was — drum roll, please — the same old same old same old.
As Steve Benen put it, “[f]or 20 minutes, the president said exactly what he was expected to say”. You know, 9/11, campaign of murder, extremist ideology, great ideological struggle, nuclear weapons, terror as a weapon. And that’s just one paragraph. He went on to mention a world beyond terror, freedom and justice, the forces of freedom and moderation, democratic changes. As well as to address directly the people of Iraq, the people of Afghanistan, the people of Lebanon, the people of Iran, the people of Syria, and the people of Darfur.
All of which sounds good, and reads well, but, given reality, Bush’s words, his exhortations to peace, are little more than, if nothing else than, platitudes, the same ones we’ve come to know so well. We don’t have to read this president’s lips. We already know what he’s going to say.
More on this, and on what Democrats need to do, over at The Reaction.