Oh by the way... =)

I am sure many of you are waiting to hear my impressions of President Bush's most recent visit to Mongolia.

For those of you who haven't heard...he did come here on Nov. 21 as part of his tour of Asia. He went to Korea and China and so decided to stop in Mongolia for about 4 or 5 hours.

The best part of all of this was, of course, my invitation to see his speech. About 10 of us were, and some thers were invited to follow the press corps around all day.

Here are some news articles if you are interested:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4455478.stm
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/22/international/asia/22notebook.html (this one quotes my friend Brett).

So what did I think? Well...it was a really interesting day. There were police and marines everywhere, I saw three black helicopters circling the city the day before and I was saluted three times on my way to the government house (by Mongolian police officers).

Once in the government house I realized just how different UB is from the rest of Mongolia. The state house is red carpeted all the way with a huge cloak room and big fancy chandeliers. We were ushered into a big posh room with a balcony, where we were seated. The stage was set up w/ a Mongolian and an American flag in the background. These flags were also positioned all over the city to welcome the "third neighbor," not being from China or Russia. Every cushioned chair was outfitted w/ a headset and remote for listening to the speech in either Mongolian or English.

We cracked up as they were testing the system, because the tester was an American and all he kept saying was "Mongoliamongoliai'mspeakingmongolian...stillspeakingmongolian...
mongoliamongoliamongolianchannel."

We sat for about four hours waiting for the speech to begin and watched MPs and VIPs file in. The balcony across from me was filled mostly with soldiers...and one Buddhist lama.

At long last the music started up and in walked Laura Bush and Condoleezza Rice and a bunch of other members of the entourage. Another minute then W. and Enkhbayar (the Mongolian president).

Enkhbayar thanked Bush for coming and proving that "small countries matter." His English was good.

Bush's Mongolian was not so good...but I can't really criticize that as my own was not in the first hours of my being in the country. He did greet people in Mongolian.

The speech itself was 13 minutes and not one word of it was unexpected. I'm sure all of you can guess the theme, as Mongolia sends rotations of 160 troops a year to Iraq.

The highlight was definitely the president thanking the Mongolian people and government for contributing more than $50,000 to Hurricane Katrina recovery. This support bowled me over and I had hoped the president would relay our nation's thanks.

He also thanked two soldiers for stopping the suicide bombing of a coalition mess tent in Iraq.

From there, the speech was regrettably downhill.

The one thing I learned from it all I never knew before. "Islamic radicalism is just like communism...they kill innocent people, just like communism, they oppose free people just like communism, and like communism, they are destined to fall."

I guess no one clued him into the upcoming Independence Day holiday. Nov. 26 marks the end of Chinese rule in Mongolia and the beginning of...you guessed it...good relations with Communist Russia. Ask a Mongolian what it was like living under the shadow of the USSR and they will likely tell you how they prospered.

Of course, Mongolians are proud to be living in a democratic society now and their continuing relationship with their neighbor to the north has evolved as that government has also evolved. They could also tell you some unprosperous stories about Stalinism. But there are some marked differences I think most Mongolians could come up with between communist activities in the last century and Islamic radicalism today.

The rest of the speech was dedicated to praising Mongolia for their participation in Iraq and declaring our two countries brothers. I thought it was interesting that in all the talk of cooperation between our great nations, no mention was made of the Peace Corps or any organization like it. To me, what better example could you come up with of cooperation and friendship between countries than the roughly 100 volunteers teaching English, health, business and youth development with the help of the same number of host country agencies? That, to me, seems a much greater example of cooperation than the number of troops involved in a war. At least a good supplement. But, alas, Mr. Bush's mind was on one thing only.

Mongolia will soon receive $11 million from the US Government, by the way, as thanks for its support of the Iraq "effort." It's called the "solidarity initiative." All the nations in the Coalition of the Willing will get something.

There's cooperation for you.

Anyway...you could say I was proud to be invited to the speech and happy to be a part of the first sitting American president's visit to this country. It was a big deal and it had an effect on the Mongolian people, who for the most part have been honored by the visit. Still...I couldn't help wishing, when all was over and done and the planes had taken off...why couldn't it have been a different president?