Key word that unlocks the future

Richard North has it right about Bush when he says there is a 'key word: democracy'. Although he's talking about Bush's words to Putin, I think the reasoning holds for much else too.

This cornerstone of W's philosophy helps decode everything he says (and unlike, say, Justin Webb, I do think that Bush's words need interpreting. The only reason they're not being interpreted is that the idiot Left likes to remain in a patronising, beatific daze, deluded into thinking the Texan has no designs, preoccupied with their own, lesser, designs, and then run screaming to the 'court of international opinion' when he does something to upset their complacent applecart. They think they can stop unpleasant things- unpleasant things as far as they see things- happening just by pretending the possibility doesn't exist. Ironically, Webb makes a comment about the US' desires for Nato assistance over Iraq, and the obvious French insult which was Chirac's response: 'Some of the contributions are very small. France will send one officer to help support the mission from here in Brussels. Luxembourg is making a financial contribution of around a hundred-ninety thousand dollars, but the Americans say it is the symbolism that counts.'. According to Webb it's the US who likes silly symbolism from the Euros.)

Proof that W's words may need decoding comes not only from the ability of the Left to delude themselves he's been successfully neutered, but from the Right's tendancy to launch attacks against what they perceive as his softness. Though I sympathise with the latter, which I found interestingly, and challengingly, expressed by A Tangled Web recently, I don't think that Bush is about to become a softie.

No, what Bush said to Europe was really not that difficult. He praised moves towards 'democratic unity'. Did he mean the EU I wonder? I don't wonder, actually.

To quote from Bush's recent words:

'America supports Europe's democratic unity for the same reason we support the spread of democracy in the Middle East because freedom leads to peace.'

Bush approves of a democratic European unity- ergo he doesn't approve of the Franco-German alliance which seeks through clever Euronods and Eurowinks and Eurotiddlywinks to run the show.

Notice how he linked his approval of European democracy with his pursuit of democracy in the Middle East? It's the same creature, not a different one.

Another bit of controversy seems to have occurred over Mark Steyn' remarkable article which ends so dramatically: 'This week we're toasting the end of an idea: the death of "the West".'

Austin Bay thought he was wrong, but I couldn't understand what Austin was saying- practically speaking.

For my part where I think Steyn is definitely right (never bet against him being right is my advice) is in his assessment of Bush's assessment of Europe, and the kind of figure W. cut while it seemed to him to be over, over here (anyone thinking at this point that I just made a typo needs to read some of Mark's backdated work- or his books). In other words, Bush's trip was token, and everything about it needed to be seen not for what it was on the surface, symbolically, but for what it meant in actuality.

The President's carefully measured trip was designed to do the right thing by his enemies, not to embrace their treachery.