A Younger Take on the State of the Union

Students from the United Nations International School in New York City gathered around a microphone Tuesday night to discuss their reactions to President Bush's State of the Union speech. Emily Olfson, 17, a senior editor with Children's PressLine, facilitated the discussion.

CPL: In the first part of Bush's speech, he discussed foreign policy. What were your impressions of this?

Nick Streithorst, 17: He and many of his colleagues, the neo-conservatives, are grounded in cold war ideology where they assume that, if you're a democracy, you're going to be on the United States' side. I think this is false and the recent election in Palestine is an example of this.

Isar Ramaswami, 17: I think there's this tendency to see things in very black-and-white terms. Democracy so far has been looked at as a positive without thinking about who it is that's being elected. Because even in a democracy, at the end of the day, there is someone being put in power, and you have to look at who that is and what power vacuum you're creating when you remove a dictator. That's obviously the problem that happened in Iraq. They put in democracy, but what after that?

Guillermo Farias, 17: Clearly democracy can result in regimes that are not U.S.-friendly. However, the U.S. fails to acknowledge that. What I would like to have seen is a more U.N.-friendly approach that would show that the U.S. is willing to work with the rest of the "free world" instead of just pursuing a very unilateral foreign policy.

Isar: He did make one very good point as to immigration, where he acknowledged that this country is very, very dependent on its immigrants, and in fact, the standard of living here couldn't possibly be as high as it is without the foreign workers who migrate here.

Guillermo: Yes, he at least took the first step in recognizing that the U.S. does benefit from immigration. It's truly other countries that lose a lot through immigration. I know Mexico does, that's where I'm from.

Isar: A lot of how the president justified his current foreign policy was through contrasting it with isolationism. But the specific role being played is what's in question. The fact that the U.S. will play a role in global politics is right now not up for debate. The question is what will that role be? Isolationism is, at this point, with how deeply embroiled the U.S. is in countries all around the world, not a practical option and therefore an easy one to refute, and he did so repeatedly.

Sumiran Das, 17: He dealt with economic aspect of isolationism versus direct foreign involvement in that he said that he was not going to set up protectionist barriers against foreign economies. In terms of that, he wanted American producers to be involved with Chinese and Indian producers, and be competitive and therefore lower their prices. I think that was a good step, but you have to ask the question: How is he gonna to do it?

Guillermo: The idea of economic protectionism has already been ruled out quite simply from an American point of view because they've always pursued a very sort of free trade-based economic policy. They have successfully implemented this for most of their neighbors, Latin America included. It's not until recently that Latin America has realized that this approach is not really working for a developing country. You can see this most clearly with Argentina's economic collapse and other Latin American countries that are starting to develop alternate policies to the Washington-based approach.

CPL: The second part of Bush's speech focused on domestic affairs, specifically on America's competitiveness with the rest of the world. What is your reaction to his comments?

Isar: I'm Indian, so I do find it interesting that Bush has decided to place us in the State of the Union Address. He acknowledged it as an issue that needs to be faced, but to place it as one of the nation's greatest problems I find very disheartening. For a long time, it's been really seen that the focus on engineering, mathematics and science in countries like India and China has created a high-powered group of people who are not educated purely in academics but in practical applications. Whereas here in the U.S. there's this focus on doing what one enjoys, which creates very, very brilliant people in fields like philosophy, and while that's a great benefit for individuals here, that is harming the economy as a whole. [In India] the field you go into is very much determined by how well you score rather than personal interest, and that is what's creating people who are very difficult to compete with. So the U.S. finally beginning that competition is an important step.