but I am angered by the Bush administration's appeasement of Saddam Husseir before the war and disappointed by its callous disregard for democratic principles after the war. (Applause.) Just this week, another friend of freedom, my running mate Senator Gore, laid out in precise and devastating detail the errors of this administration in dealing with Saddam Hussein. (Applause.)
President Bush showered government-backed grain credits and high technology on a regime that had used poison gas on its own people. After the war, Mr. Bush encouraged the Iraqi people to revolt against Saddam Hussein, but then abandoned them.
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has
The administration has sometimes treated the conflict between Israel and the Arab states as just another quarrel between religions and nations
Israel rather than one in which the survival of a democratic ally been at stake. (Applause.) I support strongly the peace talks that are under way, and if elected, I will continue without interruption America's role in them.
I also believe that American policy in the Middle East should be guided by a vision of the region in which our Israel and Arab partners are secure in their peace and where the practices and principles of both personal liberty and governmental accountability are spreading. example, I believe we can and must work with others to help build a more democratic and more free Lebanon. (Applause.) This pattern continues in other parts of the world.
In South Africa, Republican administrations had to be prodded by a bipartisan coalition in the Congress to abandon their failed policy of constructive engagement and to impose sanctions on the apartheid regime in Pretoria. President Bush has been slow to place America's support behind the fledgling democratic movements in other democratic nations or to distance ourselves from corrupt and dictatorial leaders elsewhere in Africa. He should encourage and nurture the stirrings for democratic reform that are surfacing all across Africa, from the birth of an independent Namibia to the pressure for democratic reforms in Kenya.
In Central and South America, the democratic revolution has won the first round, but our efforts to strengthen the fragile democracies in this hemisphere are still directed too much toward central governments and the wealthy. We should do more to support those struggling to establish grassroots democracy in Latin America and to strengthen (applause) and to strengthen the courageous small entrepreneurs who are burdened by corruption and bloated bureaucracies. We have a particular democratic responsibility in our own hemisphere to help end the cycles of violence in Haiti, to help restore democracy to Peru, even as it struggles to end the murderous violence of the Shining Path (applause) -- and to help Cuba's repressive regime join its communist cousins, to borrow a phrase, in the dustbin of history. (Applause.)
There is a
no more striking example of Mr. Bush's indifference to democracy than his policy toward China. None of us will ever forget the images of the millions of Chinese people demonstrating peacefully for
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