Questioning past US policy in the Middle East, US President George W. Bush is arguing that supporting undemocratic governments in the name of regional stability has produced only "frustration and pent-up emotions" there.
In a speech to the National Endowment for Democracy yesterday, Bush was to champion democratic gains around the globe but focus especially on the still-roiled Middle East, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday.
The speech was scheduled on the same day Bush signs an US$87.5 billion package he requested for military and reconstruction operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"After 60 years of trying to find stability through regimes that were not devoted to political liberty for their people, what we found is that we did not buy security and stability, but rather frustration and pent-up emotions in a region that has fallen behind in terms of prosperity, and in fact continues to produce ideologies of hatred," Rice said.
Bush will tell those suspicious of US motives in countries like Iraq that the political and economic freedoms America wants to see in the region are not synonymous with Westernization, she said.
"If you look at democratic development in the world, it makes its peace with local traditions and local and religious and ideological views," she said. "It's not a one-size-fits-all approach."
Those comments could be Bush's rebuttal to anti-Western sentiment brewing in the Middle East. Rice said, however, the intent is to associate the US with people who seek freedom, and to say he believes it's possible they can achieve it.
"This is not the United States doing something to this region," she said. "This is a region in which the stirrings are really quite clear."
The speech, announced only on Wednesday, would outline democracy's march during the past several years and work that remains to be done, especially in the Middle East, Rice said.
"At a time when people are struggling to be able to achieve this and to make progress in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, I think he thinks it's important to put this in a large, regional context," she said.
Rice said Bush would discuss how he believes that America's liberty, freedom and security are "inextricably linked."
"He'll talk about challenges that democracy still faces in places like Burma and North Korea and places like even China where economic liberty gives an opportunity for the march of political liberty, but where there needs to be a commitment to making that link," she said.
The president will express his support for positive developments occurring in places like Bahrain, Jordan and Saudi Arabia "where you're beginning to get some stirrings of the need for a political voice for the people," Rice said.
Saudi Arabia decided last month to hold its first local elections, at a time when the Saudi royal family is under pressure to bring democratic reform. Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy, has an unelected national advisory body, known as the Shura Council, and no parliament.
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