Bush's UN speech: there was a surprise

Okay, so one thing in Bush's speech to the UN did surprise me (my emphasis):

Events during the past two years have set before us the clearest of divides: between those who seek order and those who spread chaos; between those who work for peaceful change and those who adopt the methods of gangsters; between those who honor the rights of man and those who deliberately take the lives of men and women and children without mercy or shame.

For a domestic Republican audience, that's just boilerplate. But it's surprising he would use it for a world audience very suspicious of his own Administration's commitment to world order and international law. With all the publicity about continuing civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, and reports of chaotic conditions in Iraq especially, it was certainly an awkward choice of words.

As Glenn Kessler notes in the Washington Post:

But in two speeches that bracketed the president's address, Annan and French President Jacques Chirac suggested that it is the administration's doctrine of "preemption" -- the promise to strike against emerging threats -- that threatens to spread chaos across the globe. Both men bluntly said that the Bush administration is undermining the collective security arrangements that have governed the world since World War II. ...

Annan said that reserving "the right to act unilaterally or in ad hoc coalitions ... represents a fundamental challenge to the principles on which, however imperfectly, world peace and stability have rested for the last 58 years. My concern is that if it were to be adopted, it would set precedents that resulted in a proliferation of the unilateral and lawless use of force with or without justification."

Not one of Bush's more impressive performances.

Tags: bush, iraq war, united nations