"We are ready for the greatest achievements in the history of freedom." Could it be that President Bush pronounced those words just 27 months ago? At the time they seemed grandiose and reckless but promising of a historic change in U.S. foreign policy. Now they mock a second term that has seen the virtual collapse of Iraq's democratic experiment, the consolidation of autocratic governments in Russia and Venezuela, the extinction of the liberal reform movements that Bush briefly inspired in the Arab Middle East -- and the de facto reversal of Bush's "freedom agenda" by his own State Department.
Who can make sense of this disaster? Perhaps the Russian-bred intellectual, maverick Israeli politician and perpetual dissident who helped inspire that soaring second inaugural address -- Natan Sharansky. Two years ago Sharansky was the improbable toast of the White House. Bush was recommending Sharansky's newly published book, " The Case for Democracy," to virtually everyone he saw; he told the New York Times that it was "part of my presidential DNA." At her confirmation hearing as secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice proposed adopting Sharansky's "town square" test, by which countries would be judged on whether their citizens felt free to shout out unpopular opinions in public.
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