Excerpt: The Bush Agenda

By Antonia Juhasz, AlterNet. Posted May 5, 2006.

[Editor's Note: This is an edited excerpt from Antonia Juhasz's new book, The Bush Agenda : Invading the World, One Economy at a Time, published by Regan Books.]

An uncharacteristically somber George Walker Bush approached the podium of the Great Hall of the United Nations on Sept. 14, 2005. As the president stood in midtown Manhattan to address the gathered members of the General Assembly, much of the U.S. Gulf Coast lay buried beneath a sea of water, mud, waste, sand and debris. Two days before, the bodies of 45 people had been discovered in a flooded New Orleans hospital, adding to a death toll that already exceeded a thousand. Over one million people were without homes, including tens of thousands just recently released from the New Orleans Convention Center and Superdome, where they were forced to stay for almost a week without food, water or electricity while outdoor temperatures exceeded a sweltering 100 degrees.

This would be President George W. Bush's fifth address before the U.N. General Assembly. Two months after Sept. 11, 2001, he established an annual tradition of addressing the Assembly within days of the anniversary of the terrorist attacks and just miles from ground zero. The president has used each speech to put forward his international agenda squarely within the context of 9/11. It was with these speeches that Bush made the case for war beyond Afghanistan, into Iraq, and against all states that harbor terrorists; he laid out the criteria for those who are "with us" versus those who are "against us" as he built a "coalition of the willing"; and he affirmed his commitment to expanded international trade policies in the name of fighting terrorism and spreading freedom.

The president, visibly tired, spent much of the speech looking down at his notes. His familiar easy swagger, comfortable grin and animated gestures were all but missing. True to form, however, he made no alteration to his message. Bush spent a mere 95 seconds of the 25-minute speech discussing the hurricane. He noted the devastation, thanked the gathered nations for their support and moved on. Then, as he had done every year for the previous four years, the president devoted the bulk of his address to just two topics. The first, not surprisingly, was the war on terror, including the war in Iraq. The second was the expansion of free trade. Once again, Bush offered these two policies, war and free trade, as twin solutions to virtually all of the world's problems -- from global poverty to international health crises, including AIDS, malaria and the Avian flu -- and as the means to achieving a better world.

The president described the benefits of war and his administration's commitment to it by assuring his listeners that "all of us will live in a safer world" if we stay the course in Iraq and complete the war effort. The United States and all "civilized nations" would "continue to take the fight to the terrorists" and "defeat the terrorists on the battlefield." As for free trade, Bush explained that the United States would also defeat the terrorists by fighting poverty and "the surest path to greater wealth is greater trade. … By expanding trade, we spread hope and opportunity to the corners of the world, and we strike a blow against the terrorists. … Our agenda for freer trade is part of our agenda for a freer world."

The agenda has been refined by President Bush and leading members and allies of his administration over decades, dating back most notably to the administration of his father, George Herbert Walker Bush. Its leading framers include men who served in the administrations of both father and son, such as Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Zalmay Khalilzad, Robert Zoellick and Scooter Libby. Decades of joint writing, refining and advocating for a set of clear economic and military principles reached its fullest articulation and most aggressive implementation under the administration of George W. Bush -- what I call the "Bush Agenda." This agenda predates the current president, however, and its advocates certainly hope it will outlast him.

Within the Bush Agenda, "freer trade for a freer world" refers to specific economic policies designed especially to support key U.S. multinational corporations that are used as veritable weapons of war, both in the war on terror and in the administration's broader struggle to spread its vision of a freer and safer world. Often, these economic policies are applied in tandem with America's military forces, as was the case in the March 2003 invasion and ongoing occupation of Iraq. To date, the Iraq war represents the fullest and most relentless application of the Bush Agenda. The "freer and safer world" envisioned by Bush and his administration is ultimately one of an ever-expanding American empire driven forward by the growing powers of the nation's largest multinational corporations and unrivaled military.

Antonia Juhasz is a Foreign Policy In Focus scholar who is based in San Francisco and working on a book about the economic invasion of Iraq. She is currently on tour with The Bush Agenda and you can view her schedule on her web site, TheBushAgenda.org.

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