Agence France Presse goes right to the source for their penetrating analysis of George Bush’s speech to the UN: Islamists and their enablers, who predictably spew the usual hatred and infantile victimology. To AFP, though, this self-defeating nonsense is “analysis:” Bush wasting his time with address to Mideast population: analysts.

CAIRO (AFP) - Arab commentators have dismissed US President George W. Bush’s appeal for democracy directly to the people of the region as a patronising and doomed effort to give a new face to Washington’s reviled policies.

In a speech at the UN General Assembly Tuesday, Bush conveyed his message by addressing the people of the region directly but papers and analysts predicted moderates would at best turn a deaf ear while radicals would likely see more evidence of the West’s “crusade against Islam”.

“Public opinion in Arab and Muslim countries these days is much more right-wing than the regimes themselves. Find me an Iranian who will listen to the Great Satan in chief himself and go topple his government,” said Egyptian analyst Emad Gad.

Bush scolded the Iranian regime in his speech, telling the people of Iran that the main obstacle standing between them and the better future they deserve was their rulers. The US president extended a similar message to the Syrian population and also spoke directly to the people of Darfur and the Palestinian territories.

The Lebanese daily As-Safir noted that Bush “used his speech to address the Lebanese people, whose country he hopes to turn into a model of democracy.”

“But when you see what is happening in Iraq, this word translates into bloodshed, violence and civil war,” read an article entitled “Bush the Inquisitor Divides World Between Good and Evil.”

Taher Adwan, editor-in-chief of the independent Jordanian daily Al-Arab Al-Yawm, lashed out at what he said was Bush’s patronising tone. “US President George W. Bush appeared yesterday like a school teacher admonishing and threatening his students while they, the pupils, unable to respond directly to him, pledged to themselves to continue challenging him,” he said. “President Bush cannot be seen as the leader of the world,” Adwan added.