‘Less than 18 months after U.S. President George W. Bush
declared in his 2005 Inaugural Address his unequivocal commitment to the
"ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world", tyrants, particularly
in the Islamic world, are taking heart. 

From North Africa to Central
Asia, top U.S. officials are busy embracing dictators - and their sons, where
appropriate - even as they continue to mouth the pro-democracy rhetoric that
became the hallmark of the administration's foreign policy pronouncements,
particularly after the 2003 invasion of Iraq failed to turn up evidence of
weapons of mass destruction or ties to al Qaeda. 

Particularly notable in just the
past month have been White House receptions for Azerbaijani President Ilham
Aliyev and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's heir-apparent, his son Gamal; the
praise lavished by Vice President Dick Cheney on Kazakhstan President Nursultan
Nazarbayev during a recent visit to Almaty; and last week's normalisation of
Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. 

"You add up all the pieces,
and the message to the world is, 'We have a lot of other business than just
democracy in this region',"according to Thomas Carothers, director of the
Democracy and Rule of Law Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace (CEIP) here. "And that business means friendly relations with all
sorts of autocrats."’ 

Bush Democracy
Doctrine: RIP