Dubya -- Not Like All the Rest

Jeff Jacoby points to another revolutionary aspect of Dubya's presidency -- one that sets him apart from his predecessors:

''A READER living in Moscow," writes National Review's Jay Nordlinger, ''sent me a photo from a rally in Azerbaijan, which showed a youth holding up a poster of President Bush with the words, 'We Want Freedom.' The reader commented, 'It's good to remember whom people turn to when they're desperate -- and it ain't Kofi Annan.' "

Indeed. It is fashionable in some circles to invoke the United Nations as the touchstone of moral authority, but realists know better. They look to the United States, not the UN, as the great moral engine in world affairs. Like the Lebanese who waved a US flag during the demonstrations in Beirut earlier this year, like the ''Goddess of Liberty" in Tiananmen Square in 1989, the young Azerbaijani with his poster is a reminder that America and its message of freedom and individual dignity have an almost limitless capacity to inspire those who are denied them.

Every president speaks of freedom and democracy. Bush is the first to make their promotion the cornerstone of his foreign policy. His critics are legion. But from the slave camps of North Korea to that young man in Azerbaijan, so are those fervently hoping he succeeds.

Read it here.

I earlier blogged the Azerbaijan photo to which he refers here.

OK, is this reflexive enough? I refer to an article that refers to another article which in turn refers to another article, which refers to a letter, that refers to a photo I referred to in my original post. How postmodern!