Promoting Democracy Impossible While Cheney and Rumsfeld Remain

Bush talks a lot about democracy but rarely makes good on his word. I can remember before the Egyptian elections Bush talking about what a shining example of democracy Egypt was. But, as usual, it was just talk trotted out for the cameras. When the cameras aren't rolling, the story can be tragic as we hear from Shadi Hamid of Democracy Arsenal:

The language was eloquent, colored with the requisite hues of Wilsonian radicalism: “All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you.” Today, 14 months later, Ayman Nour, a courageous liberal, dissident, and leader of the al-Ghad Party, is suffering – some say dying – in prison. The Egyptian regime is destroying him, his family, and the movement he helped give birth to last year. This, we should note, is the same Egyptian regime which receives $2 billion in economic and military aid from the US each year. Where is the Bush administration’s outrage now ? Where has its celebrated love of freedom gone ? There is, instead, silence.

For me, the most troubling part of the article was the obvious ineffectiveness of Condi Rice. She's getting better press these days than she was when she was National Security Adviser but she's not the one creating Bush's foreign policy. Who are the two people in the Bush administration with the most power and the least interest in democracy? As long as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld remain in office, whatever effectiveness Condi Rice can muster will be limited. And whatever talk there is about democracy will be more illusion than reality.