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More than two months ago, the cover of Time Magazine declared “the end of Cowboy Diplomacy.” Citing the difficulties in Iraq and Afghanistan and the low approval of the president at the time, Mike Allen and Romesh Ratnesar point to the Bush Administration’s emphasis on diplomacy with North Korea as evidence that President Bush has abandoned a bold foreign policy in favor of multilateral finesse. Not only are Allen and Ratnesar wrong about the vitality of the Bush Doctrine, they fail to understand what the Bush Doctrine is really about.

Time Magazine, and nearly every other media outlet, describes the Bush Doctrine in terms of unilateralism, preemption, oil interests and military dominance and intimidation. With his speech last Monday before the United Nations General Assembly, however, Bush showed that the Bush Doctrine is not a specific outline, but a broad principle. It is traditional American ideals supported by strong language and even stronger action. In his speech, Bush spoke in terms of democracy, freedom, and opportunity. The Bush Doctrine can be summed up in one word – empowerment. Just like the American Revolution, the Civil Rights Movement and World War II, the Bush Doctrine says that if people, all people, are given economic opportunity and political freedom, peace will eventually prevail.

The president’s speech before the UN was the clearest address to date of the principles behind the United States’ foreign policy since 2001.

President Bush did not go to the UN to speak to the bureaucrats in the general assembly. He did not address the heads of state of our allies and enemies. Bush spoke to people. To the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, he reassured our commitment to them in their pursuit of life and liberty. To the people of Iran and Syria, he urged them to demand more from their governments than extremist ideology and hateful rhetoric, to focus on opportunity and advancement. To the people of Sudan, he asked them to remain hopeful and not allow their extremist leaders to stall the UN’s efforts to stop the genocide in their country. To the people of Palestine, he urged them to support peace and demand that Hamas follow through on their promises to serve the Palestinian people.

It is obvious that Bush knows where true power lies. The greatest hope for peace is that the moderate middle class can be empowered to stand against both rogue extremists and their own oppressive governments.

“Some have argued that the democratic changes we’re seeing in the Middle East are destabilizing the region,” said Bush. “This argument rests on a false assumption, that the Middle East was stable to begin with.”

Such a perspective is eye-opening. It is apparent that the Middle East was not stable with tyrants like Saddam Hussein in control. The region was simply quieter. The “birth pangs of democracy,” as Condoleezza Rice describes it, were muffled by tyranny. Tyranny much like Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad threaten the region with today.

Bush continued, “The reality is that the stability we thought we saw in the Middle East was a mirage. For decades, millions of men and women in the region have been trapped in oppression and hopelessness. And these conditions left a generation disillusioned, and made this region a breeding ground for extremism.”

The false stability of the past was an equilibrium sustained by fear and oppression. Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and the other extremist forces in the region were fermented in the black market of free ideas established by absence of liberty.

President Bush makes apparent in his UN speech that he knows what America’s mission is. The principles of the Declaration of Independence do not stop at America’s border and that is what the Bush Doctrine is all about.

Darren McVey is a junior in the Department of Political Science.

E-mail him at opinion@louisvillecardinal.com