This is an excerpt from his full analysis, which is available on the FPIF website.

"As we gather tonight, hundreds of thousands of American servicemen and women are deployed across the world in the war on terror. By bringing hope to the oppressed and delivering justice to the violent, they are making America more secure."

Though no one should question the commitment and bravery of American servicemen and women, their missions of invading and occupying foreign countries and engaging in high altitude bombing and urban counterinsurgency operations that kill civilians has brought more fear than hope, delivered more violence than justice, and has created an unprecedented level of anti-American sentiment in the Islamic world and beyond that has actually made America less secure.

"We have faced serious challenges together and now we face a choice: We can go forward with confidence and resolve or we can turn back to the dangerous illusion that terrorists are not plotting and outlaw regimes are no threat to us."

This assumes that those who believe that the Bush administration's policies are illegal, immoral, and counterproductive are living under illusions that deny the dangers from terrorists and despots. This rhetorical device ignores the many national security analysts and ordinary Americans who are fully aware of the forces arrayed against the United States yet believe the country must choose better means to protect itself than continuing the policies of the Bush administration.

"The first to see our determination were the Taliban, who made Afghanistan the primary training base of al Qaeda killers. Businesses are opening, health care centers are being established, and the boys and girls of Afghanistan are back in school. With help from the new Afghan Army, our coalition is leading aggressive raids against surviving members of the Taliban and al Qaeda."

While life has improved markedly in the capital of Kabul, the vast majority of Afghanistan is under the grip of warlords, ethnic militias, opium magnates, and overall lawlessness. While women and girls are now legally able to attend school and go out of their houses unaccompanied, many are now too afraid to do so because of the breakdown of law and order.

Furthermore, the aggressive raids led by the United States are unfortunately not just against surviving members of the Taliban and al Qaeda, but often end up being against innocent villagers. Indeed, more Afghan civilians have been killed from U.S. bombing raids than American civilians were killed from the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

"Our aim is a democratic peace, a peace founded upon the dignity and rights of every man and woman. America acts in this cause with friends and allies at our side, yet we understand our special calling: This great republic will lead the cause of freedom."

No country has given more military and economic support to more dictatorships and occupation armies in the Middle East and in the world as a whole than has the United States . The monetary value of U.S. military aid to Middle Eastern countries is six times our economic aid. The top commercial export from the United States to the Middle East is not consumer items, high technology, or foodstuffs but armaments. Virtually all the recipients of such weaponry are governments that engage in gross and systematic human rights abuses. Unfortunately, U.S. policy has little to do with peace or freedom.

Perhaps even more disheartening than these misleading statements by President Bush during his State of the Union address is that, in their formal responses to Bush's speech, Democratic congressional leaders Nancy Pelosi and Tom Daschle failed to challenge them other than a vague appeal for stronger diplomatic efforts. None of the analysts on the major networks challenged these misleading statements either. Meanwhile, the two Democratic presidential contenders who dominated the Iowa caucuses the previous evening were senators who have largely supported Bush administration policy in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel/Palestine, and elsewhere in the Middle East.

President Bush can get away with such misleading rhetoric because he knows the mainstream media and the Democratic Party will allow him to do so. Unless the American public demands greater accountability from the news media and the Democratic Party leadership, George W. Bush will have four more opportunities to make similar State of the Union speeches.

FOR Statement in Response to
President Bush's State of the Union Address

There is Another Way: Building the 'World House.'

Barely a week ago, President George W. Bush placed a wreath at the tomb of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., honoring his prophetic leadership and life. It appeared to be, as the many protestors in Atlanta pointed out, a fairly cynical gesture by the president, who unleashed pre-emptive war on Iraq and whose policies, laid out in his State of the Union address, contain a vision for this country and the world that runs so counter to the one the late Dr. King espoused.

President Bush defended the chaos and destruction brought down on the people of Iraq as "liberation," and promised to bring more "liberation" to the rest of the Middle East - or to any other region where he deems America's interests are being challenged. Dr. King, in his prescient essay on international affairs, The World House, warned that history was cluttered with the wreckage of nations who came killing in the name of liberation and peace. This month, as we celebrate the 75th anniversary of Dr. King's birth, we believe the great pacifist and civil rights leader would wince at Bush's words, and weep to see what America has become.

President Bush justified the war on Iraq by pointing to Libya's voluntary dismantling of its weapons of mass destruction. Dr. King believed that no goal, not even the goal of peace itself, justified violence or war, and that nations separated by religion, ideas, culture and interest had to learn to live together in peace or "perish together as fools." President Bush dismissed the notion that America needs any sort of "permission slip" from the international community in order to act. Diplomacy, he said, was only successful when backed by threat, and he promised strategies to threaten, isolate and pressure North Korea and Iran. Dr. King, on the other hand, believed in diplomacy and the United Nations as the last best hope of reconciling differences without violence.

Americans are justifiably anxious about their safety after the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and terrorist acts are a real threat in many parts of the world. But in its efforts to heighten the kind of fear that justifies ongoing war, the Bush administration has created a terrorist bogeyman - much like the Communist bogeyman of the Cold War. In his State of the Union address, the president dismissed Iraqis opposed to the US occupation as "enemies of freedom," and warned ominously that terrorists continued to plot against America and the civilized world. Dr. King rejected the objectification of others and spoke passionately against "the convenient temptation" to attribute the current turmoil and bitterness throughout the world to the presence of a conspiracy. Rather than waging war or threatening other nations, America should, in the spirit of Dr. King, "seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice" which are the fertile soil in which the seeds of terrorism grow.

Despite his disclaimers that America has "no desire to dominate, no ambitions for Empire," the president's State of the Union speech was laced with the notion that it is America's mission to bring American values, notably free markets, to the entire Middle East. Left out was any discussion of oil or US corporate profits to be derived from those "free markets." Neither was there transparency about "free elections," which almost certainly won't take place in Iraq or anywhere else until the United States is satisfied that a malleable and friendly government will be elected.

Dr. King warned passionately against attempting to remake the world in America's image. All war-makers, he wrote, have in common an arrogant belief that they are liberators, that their actions will bring about a peaceful world order. In reality, Dr. King wrote, they are seeking a world that personifies their own "egotistic dreams," a world "fashioned after their selfish conceptions of an ideal existence." He talked about "surreptitious" neo-colonialism, which almost always targets poorer and darker peoples and inevitably reaps widespread resentment. He spoke of control and manipulation masquerading as aid and assistance. Instead, Dr. King offered a just and compassionate version of American leadership: address the root causes of conflict and hatred with a global commitment to relieve poverty, combat racism and share earthly blessings with the entire world. "A true revolution of values," he said, "will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just.' "

On the home front, the State of the Union address offered little to those of us who are deeply concerned about the state of our society - and little that would have satisfied Dr. Martin Luther King's vision of justice and compassion. President Bush used the war on terrorism to lobby for renewal of the Patriot Act, with its assault on civil liberties. He cited education funding programs that have left thousands of schools unfunded, tax cuts that have profited the rich but not the working poor, and a Medicare program that benefits pharmaceutical and insurance companies, but not senior citizens. According to President Bush, the economy is growing stronger. He said nothing of the 2.3 million jobs lost since he took office, many of them exported abroad, or of the 8 million laid-off American workers still looking for jobs. He said nothing of the more than 2 million who have simply dropped out of the workforce in despair, or the 8 million whose right to overtime is being sacrificed to protect the interests of employers.

Is this the justice, sense of shared humanity and "people before profit" that Martin Luther King sought? We believe not. As Dr. King said in The World House about America and the global community: "There is no deficit in human resources; the deficit is in human will." We believe Americans have the will and moral courage to say no to exploitation, war and injustice -- at home and abroad. Dr. King believed in America's potential to lead by example, with humility and compassion. We must explore alternatives to war and human destruction, to profit over the plight of people, to the threats that poverty, racism and militarism pose. Dr. King fervently believed in the attainability of these alternative goals. We urge those in power in America today to read The World House and rediscover a different vision from the presented in the State of the Union.

Finally, we invite the Bush administration and its supporters to embrace the spirit of Dr. King, to bring about "a revolution of values" that rejects war and joins us with the world community to wage peace and achieve justice for all. The United States is part of The World House; that is where our overriding loyalty resides. In that spirit, we need to make a supreme effort, in the words of Dr. King, to "generate the readiness, indeed the eagerness, to enter into the new world which is now possible, 'The city which hath foundation, whose building and maker is God.' "