However, it seems that the folks at WaPo are easily confused, as they found it necessary to provide us with the following helpful headline: Bush Speech Not a Sign of Policy Shift, Officials Say.
I must admit, I am unsure how one could have interpreted the speech as a policy shift. It seems to me to be a farirly firm reiteration of Bush’s basic foreign policy approach post-911, or , as the piece puts it:
Bush advisers said the speech was the rhetorical institutionalization of the Bush doctrine and reflected the president’s deepest convictions about the purposes behind his foreign policies.
Now, it had a grander, more dramatic flare to it, and certainly enshrined the goal of exporting freedom in high rhetoric and theoretically into the long-term foreign policy vision of the United States. However, it hardly should have anyone thinking that it consisted of any kind of policy change.
Surely the Post’s reporters have been paying some modicum of attention the last four years, yes?