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| Sunday, 23 January 2005 |
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Features |  |
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Bush vested with responsibility to unite US Globescan by M. P. Muttiah US President, George W. Bush, began his second term on Thursday with
much fanfare in the US capitol. In his inaugural address, Bush George W. Bush, who served as the 46th Governor of Texas, was sworn in as the 43 rd President of the United States on January 20,2001, after a campaign in which he outlined sweeping proposals to reform public schools, transform national defence, provide tax relief, modernise Social Security and medicare. He was able to win that election with a narrow margin of mere 537 votes against Vice President Al Gore. The attacks of September 11, changed the course of the United States and Bush declared war against terror. Afghanistan became the target and Taliban was ousted from power. Bush's main leadership challenge, according to Michael Hirsh, was to 'isolate Islamist terrorists'. After the September 11 attack, he had a golden opportunity to bring the free world together in the face of a common threat. Instead, Bush managed to isolate America. He is still paying the price". In invading Iraq Bush defied the United Nations and acted according to his own whims and fancies. He was supported only by British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Israeli Prime Minister Aeriel Sharon in his adventures. President Bush won his second term, defeating Democrat John Kerry, in the November, 2004 elections. He was able to score a majority of 380,000 votes. Unlike Bill Clinton, Bush did not have to rely on the support of Democrats at the House. The Republicans had increased their majority in the House by three seats and by four in the Senate during Bush's previous term. At present the number of Republicans in the House of Representatives is 232, while the Democrats is 202, in the Senate there are 55 Republicans and 45 Democrats. This has given him an added strength in handling complex issues without any difficulty. After his victory, Bush said that America and Europe were the pillars of the free world. He ordered the new CIA director, Porter Goss, to purge the Agency of some of those who had disagreed with the White House and changed several important personalities. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, who was praised by Bush as "one of the most effective and admired diplomats in American's history. He has helped to rally the world in a global war and to resolve dangerous regional conflicts and to confront the desperate challenges of natural disaster and hunger and poverty and diseases," and was an official who served under six Presidents, has no place in the new administration. New team President Bush has begun his second term with new officials with long experience. Bush's first-term National Security Advisor, Condoleeza Rice, has been appointed as the Secretary of State. She is an expert on the Soviet Union and was a director of Soviet and East European Affairs with the National Security Council under George Bush. She was a key player in Senior Bush's policies in Poland and the former Soviet Union. Appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday, Rice said that the election of Mahmoud Abbas, Israel's withdrawal plan from Gaza Strip offered a real opportunity for peace. Referring to Iraq, she said it would be a mistake to set a time-table for withdrawing troops from Iraq. She held Russia accountable for backsliding on democracy and said the United States would work with allies on Iran and North Korea. "The time for diplomacy is now" she said. According to White House chief of staff, Andrew Card, she would no longer be expected to summarise the views of others, but will state her own, saying "This is what I think. This is what the State Department strongly recommends." In an interview to Washington Post, President Bush said that he expected Rice to embark on a campaign that "explains our motives and explains our intentions. There is no question but to continue to do a better job of explaining what America is all about". As one of Bush's closest confidantes, Rice would be one of the principal contenders in forming foreign policy and, after Bush himself, the most visible embodiment of the United States abroad. Albert Gonzales, who once called the Geneva Conventions obsolete, has become America's new attorney general, the highest law-enforcement official in the United States. Vice President, Dick Cheney, who was considered as the architect of the Gulf war, has a long history with the Republican Party. He held mid-level posts under Richard Nixon and was Chief of Staff under Gerald Ford.In 1989, he was appointed Secretary of Defence by George Bush Sr. Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, is a veteran of three Republican administrations. He served as US Ambassador to NATO, as Chief of Staff and Secretary of Defence under Gerald Ford. He is an expert on missile defence, and supports the National Missile Defence. At the national front, President Bush's Social Security Scheme would be the main agenda. During the election campaign Bush said that he wanted to permit younger workers to divert part of their pay-roll taxes, which now go to state-run Social Security Trust Fund, into private accounts. On this issue, Bush will have to deal both with Opposition and competing proposals from his own party. According to Congressman Tom Davies from Virginia, around two-dozen Republicans did not want Bush to tackle the "third rail" of politics at all. The economy of the United States faces complex and consequential challenges, says Robert E. Rubin, former Secretary of the Treasury, under President Bill Clinton. He says the fiscal position of the US government had decayed dramatically. ``In 2001, the Congressional Budget Office had projected $5.6 trillion 10-year surplus. Now most independent analysts project a 10-year deficit of nearly $5.5 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts are made permanent, it will cost roughly $4 trillion over the next 10 years, which pouts them at the heart of this long-term fiscal threat". Signs for the future In the field of foreign policy, changes have already begun. President Bush, in an interview last week, said he would not rule out military action if the United States cannot persuade Iran to stop short of building nuclear weapons. He hoped it could be solved diplomatically, but he would not ever take any option off the table. The United States, on Monday, introduced new sanctions against seven Chinese companies, as well as two firms from Taiwan and North Korea, saying they might have helped Iran in producing weapons of mass destruction and more modern ballistic missiles. Seymour Hersh, writing in the New Yorker, said the Bush administration had been conducting secret spying missions inside Iran at least since mid-2004, gathering intelligence on declared and suspected nuclear, chemical and missile sites. "The goal is to identify and isolate three dozen, and perhaps, more, such targets that could be destroyed by precision strikes and short term commando raids." These and other actions of the past week show that there would be no comprehensible changes in the hard-line policy in the four-year reign of Bush that has begun on Thursday. |
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said unity
between Republicans and Democrats in Congress was necessary to pass his
laws. He said that he had a responsibility to try to unite the United
States to achieve big things for all Americans and was looking forward to
that challenge.
