The Speech Heard Round the World

Posted on January 24, 2005

The fallout from President Bush's inaugural speech has surged around the world like a comforting blanket of ionizing radiation. USA Today provides some tasty reaction soundbites from world leaders and commentators, which range from The Guardian's David Aaronovitch saying that Bush "seems to have terrified a good portion of the world," to Iranian Intelligence Minister Ali Younessi's: "We are eagerly looking for the Americans' commandos to come to Iran since they are chicks which would rapidly be picked up by our eagles."

Perhaps that last one lost something in the translation -- it probably sounds more menacing in Farsi. The Lebanese paper Daily Star said people in the Middle East were "unimpressed, or moved to frustration or even anger" by Bush's words. The paper urged Arab governments to engage him or risk seeing "U.S. forces toppling statues in ... Tehran and Damascus and who knows where else."

But the most bitter blow came from inside the Beltway. The Wall Street Journal ran a column by Bush loyalist Peggy Noonan entitled "Way Too Much God: Was the President's Speech a Case of 'Mission Inebriation'?" When Peggy Noonan writes that the speech was "God-drenched" and that it "left this Bush supporter yearning for something she does not normally yearn for, and that is: nuance," that's when you know the speech was over the top. Mission inebriation, indeed.