When citizens around the world suffer, we suffer with them

Bush is hanging out at the UN today. Oh good.

This morning, he met new Pakistani President Zardari (aka, Mr. Benazir Bhutto). He expressed condolences from the “collective heart of the American people” about the weekend bombing in Islamabad that the collective brain of the American people never heard about or paid attention to.

WHAT WE WANT: “We want our friends around the world to be making a good living.”


Later, he attended a meeting on food security, a personal concern of his since that pretzel tried to kill him.

“The United States is a compassionate nation,” he proclaimed. “When citizens around the world suffer, we suffer with them.” And when they go hungry, we...um...

But we’re doing something about it. “We’ve committed about $5 billion of taxpayers’ money over the next two years to make sure people don’t go hungry.” In fact, CEOs of financial institutions will get $5 billion each just to make really quite sure that they never have to miss a meal.

It’s just not the week to really impress anybody with that $5 billion figure, is what I’m saying.

And he addressed the UN General Assembly. He told it that “the ideals of the Charter are now facing a challenge as serious as any since the U.N.’s founding -- a global movement of violent extremists. By deliberately murdering the innocent to advance their aims, these extremists defy the fundamental principles of international order.” Dude, murdering the innocent to advance aims is the fundamental principle of international order. You could look it up.


Anyway, the speech was about how terrorism is bad and should be dealt with pre-emptively, democracy and freedom are good, “clarity of vision” is required and so on.

See if you can spot the word that gives something away: “In the decades ahead, the United Nations and other multilateral organizations must continually confront terror. This mission requires clarity of vision. We must see the terrorists for what they are: ruthless extremists who exploit the desperate, subvert the tenets of a great religion, and seek to impose their will on as many people as possible.” The word was “a” in “a great religion.” Just one religion. He’s pretending to be talking about the evils of terrorism, but what he means is Muslims.


WHAT SOME MAY BE TEMPTED TO ASSUME: “As the 21st century unfolds, some may be tempted to assume that the threat has receded. This would be comforting; it would be wrong.” How does he know what will happen as the 21st century unfolds? “The terrorists believe time is on their side, so they made waiting out civilized nations part of their strategy.” See, they’re especially dangerous when they’re not doing anything at all.

WHO SOME? WHAT SOME? WE WANT NAMES ALREADY. “Some question whether people in certain parts of the world actually desire freedom.”

NOT PATERNALISM: “Experience also shows that to be effective, we must adopt a model of partnership, not paternalism. This approach is based on our conviction that people in the developing world have the capacity to improve their own lives -- and will rise to meet high expectations if we set them.” And our setting high expectations for them to meet is not paternalism how exactly?


FOR EXAMPLE, I’M STANDING RIGHT HERE AND NO ONE IS PUTTING ME UNDER ARREST: “For example, there should be an immediate review of the Human Rights Council, which has routinely protected violators of human rights.”

Laura Bush, Ban ki-Moon’s wife, and Carla Bruni (Sarkozy’s wife) listen to Bush’s speech being simultaneously translated into French, Burmese, and Percocet.