Myanmar?

The Inquirer editorial this morning is a cornucopia of contradictions:

Give President Bush credit for setting lofty goals, such as this one that he mentioned during both his inaugural address and his State of the Union speech on Wednesday night:
"America will stand with the allies of freedom to support democratic movements in the Middle East and beyond, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world."
What a fine, humane world it would be if tyrannies were no more.
It's a world not only worth imagining but, as the President said, worth trying to achieve.
But the key questions are: how and where?
On these points, President Bush has been vague in statement and less than fully coherent in policy and execution.

I emphasized that snide little remark because it may have a place in a Krugman piece, but noot in the editorial of a major newspaper. Now let's get on the the final sentence. Bush has been incoherent in policy and execution? I give you the examples of the how and where: Iraq and Afghanistan. I believe the execution portion was done in an immensely coherent way. The doom and gloom that was predicted by the Inquirer and other mainstream dailies did not come to pass and people voted in huge numbers. If the president had listened to the MSM, the elections would not have taken place and probably would've been put off indefinitely. The Iraqi's and Afghani's did vote and that makes them both democracies.

As for the tyrannical part, is the Inquirer suggesting that Hamid Karzai and Ayad Allawi are tyrants? Karzai was elected and Allawi, while not elected (we await the vote count) has been anything but a tyrant.

Bush took on allies as well in last's Wednesday's speech by saying Saudi Arabia and Egypt need to move from authoritarian rule toward democracy.
He more also forcefully challenged the authoritarian regimes of Iran and Syria to refrain from threatening activities such as aiding terrorists or seeking weapons of mass destruction.
Still, Bush did not mention some of the world's worst tyrannies - some of whom are friends to the United States when it comes to fighting terrorism.
As he draws up this tricky to-do list on ending tyranny, Bush should make sure these countries are on it: Myanmar; Zimbabwe; Uzbekistan; Laos; Turkmenistan; Equatorial Guinea; and Belarus - just to name some.

Remember the collective MSM gasp when Bush named the Axis of Evil? What the hell would have been the headlines if Bush called out Laos? Or Equatorial Guinea? The MSM would've been screaming IMPERIALISM! Think about what the Inquirer has been reduced to; chiding Bush for not mentioning the evil regime of Myanmar. As for Zimbabwe, perhaps the Inquirer editorial board should discuss the dictatorship of Mugabe with Chirac.

But Bush did not make a general call for reinvigorating foreign development aid, which goes toward such basics as income-generation opportunities, schools, and health-care systems. All those elements create the soil in which democratic self-government can take root and thrive.
There are many ways to calculate how much foreign aid the U.S. government gives. But the most honest way is to measure aid as a percentage of the national income.
By that standard, the United States gives only 0.34 percent - less than 1 percent - to nonmilitary foreign aid.
That's not enough if we are truly serious about ending tyranny in as many places as we can.
Money alone will not end oppression, but neither can democracy be spread or sustained without sufficient political and fiscal investments.

Do those numbers include monies spent on relief like the recent Tsunami relief efforts? What about the cost of the military efforts needed to supply devastated Aceh with fresh water? This, sadly, is the Inquirer editorial page; slamming the President for not speaking out against Laos and spending less than 1% in non-military aid.

Update: A nice companion piece to this for the Telegraph:

The reality, though, is very different. Consider the six countries where Miss Rice says she wants America actively to promote freedom: Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Zimbabwe, Belarus and Burma. It can be argued that Washington has (to borrow John Major's notorious phrase about Ulster) a "selfish strategic or economic interest" in the first three, but what possible stake does it have in the others?
In each case, the Bush Administration is seeking to tilt the balance of power towards freedom. Contrast this with the EU, fêting Robert Mugabe, withdrawing its support from anti-Castro dissidents, seeking accommodation with the Iranian ayatollahs.

Indeed.