Freedom's March

George W Bush is doing his farewell tour of the world, and is currently visiting lil ol' England. The pointless visit is as predictable as the pointless protests - Bush is a world leader on the way out, an unpopular, idiotic lame duck. The protests are a knee jerk reaction, and will achieve nothing more than further disruption to the City of London. The time has come to start getting over Dubya - within months he will have begun his slow decline into obscurity. Hopefully he should become a footnote in the history books, an oddity - an example of what not to do in the White House.

Of course, that won't be the way he wants to be remembered. Indeed, part of this farewell world tour is to start working on that legacy. Look at his interview with Sky news. The rhetoric is already coming through:

"This isn't the American Empire, the British Empire or coalition empire; this is freedom's march. And freedom has had a way of taking hold in some of the places where people have never given freedom a chance.... I'm not surprised that an enemy that can't stand freedom is trying to shake our will."

One of the many ways in which Bush - a man who restricts stem cell research, who believes abortion is evil and should be banned, a man who does not allow gay couple to form a civil union - has failed is in his understanding of freedom. Whenever you see Bush talking about freedom, insert a "my" before the word freedom. Because - and make no mistake about this - it is all about a very narrow vision of freedom. A Christian Fundamentalist, neo-conservative mutant strand of freedom. One that should be alien to anyone who generally believes that people should be free to choose how they live. In some respects, Bush's vision of freedom is not that different from Kim Jong Il's - "you can be *free*, just so long as it is my vision of *freedom*".

But whilst Bush will probably spend a large portion of the next six months painting himself as a freedom fighter, the rest of history will have something different to say. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will rage on, whilst other oppressive regimes that have been prodded by the Bush administration happily go on suppressing. Then there are other countries that abuse human rights and have little freedom that have been glossed over by the Bush regime - Burma, China, Zimbabwe. Even if history does see Bush as a man who brought freedom through war to two nations, it will have to judge him as a man who was very selective about which countries were allowed to join his freedom march.

And people have been questioning it - not just during Bush administration, but throughout the past century - just why does the USA have a right to decide which countries need to be freed, and why does it award itself the ability to free those countries? The Bush years will become synonymous with US arrogance, and of a belief that freedom is best brought to countries in the wake of the US war machine ploughing across the landscape.

On the radio this morning, I heard Bush being compared to Ronald Reagan. It made the point that Reagan was disliked by many during his time in office, but is now seen as someone who brought freedom to many countries. Now, whilst Reagan did help to bring freedom to a good many people in the world, it was part of a team effort. Thatcher also played a role. As did - both intentionally and unintentionally - Gorbachev. And one of the few good things Pope John Paul II managed to achieve - in between condemning homosexuality, continuing to forbid his followers to use contraception or have an abortion, and hiding paedophile priests - was supporting the bid for freedom in Poland. Reagan did play a part in all this, but the more important distinction is between how Reagan's push for freedom was achieved and how Bush has tried to achieve his. Reagan (perhaps because of the ever present threat of nuclear war, perhaps for other reasons) used diplomacy in almost all cases. Bush has unleashed the might of the Military Industrial Complex.

Bush has displayed the judgement and tactics of a schoolyard bully who believes he is right - he doesn't understand the need to persuade, to convince, the win over the other person. No, he would rather go in with his fists and punch anybody who doesn't agree with him into submission. His freedom march is much less free than he realises - he's there to force people and nations to be free.

I love America - I think she has brought a great deal to this world, and will continue to do so. I hope America will become a democratic beacon to the world once more. But I know this can only happen when Bush gains his rightful legacy in this history books - as an aberration, as a zealous ignorant maniac whose perverted vision of freedom damaged the US and the world.

I wish George W Bush the very best when he goes back to his ranch for good. That is his natural place, not as a freedom's hero in the history books.