The Arab world on Sunday got a stern lecture on the need to spread freedoms and isolate state sponsors of terror that he said are holding the region back. "Too often in the Middle East, politics has consisted of one leader in power and the opposition in jail," Bush said in remarks prepared for delivery before the World Economic Forum on the Middle East. "The time has come for nations across the Middle East to abandon these practices, and treat their people with the dignity and respect they deserve."
The White House released the text of the speech Bush was giving to hundreds of global policymakers and business leaders gathered in this Red Sea beach town.
Bush presented Mideast leaders with a long to-do list: make their economies more diverse, competitive and open to entrepreneurs; enact political reforms that move nations into democratic governments, and not just sham ones; allow freedom of information and rule of law; improve education; ensure greater participation in society for women; and push back against the negative influence of "spoilers" like Iran and Syria.
"There is much to do," he said. "The future is in your hands — and freedom and peace are within your grasp."
"I continue to hope that Egypt can lead the region in political reform," he said.
Bush also offered plenty of praise for democratic advances, naming countries like Turkey, Afghanistan, Iraq, Morocco and Jordan. "The light of liberty is beginning to shine," he said.
The American president asked the Islamic world to join the United States in its determination to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. "To allow the world's leading sponsor of terror to gain the world's deadliest weapon would be an unforgivable betrayal of future generations," he said.
He made clear that there are ways to define democracy that he finds acceptable — and not. "Some say any state that holds an election is a democracy," Bush said. Not so. "True democracy," he said, requires "vigorous political parties allowed to engage in free and lively debate," institutions that ensure legitimate elections and accountability for leaders, and an opposition that can campaign "without fear and intimidation."
Bush also devoted considerable attention to the disenfranchisement of women in many Mideast nations. A strong economy can't be built without the participation of the "formidable force" of females, he said. "This is a matter of morality and of basic math," he said. "No nation that cuts off half its population from opportunities will be as productive or prosperous as it could be."
Bush rebutted what he said are the many arguments from "skeptics about democracy in this part of the world," without specifying who they are. He said democracy is not "a Western value that America seeks to impose on unwilling citizens" and nor is it incompatible with the religion of Islam.
