Strong but incomplete

President George Bush's State of the Union address, delivered on Wednesday morning Jakarta time, demonstrates a superb mastery of communication techniques that have effectively captured worldwide attention.

Assisted by a first-class writing team, the American president has successfully touched the basic emotions of the American public in terms of a strong commitment to their country.

By having Hamid Karzai, the leader of the Afghan interim administration, as his personal guest who was seated in the House gallery next to first lady Laura Bush, it signaled that much has been achieved in these past four months.

Not only has the Taliban regime in Afghanistan collapsed and the al-Qaeda terrorist network been uprooted, more importantly the beginnings of a new Afghanistan are already becoming visible. The successful outcome of the recent international conference on the reconstruction of Afghanistan has made the presence of Hamid Karzai during the delivery of the State of the Union address a more meaningful event.

President Bush stressed that his proposed budget is meant to support three great goals for America: To win the war against terrorism, to protect American territory and to revive the national economy. Overall, it was indeed a powerful speech, but in our judgment it was also an incomplete one.

The rest of the world, especially the developing non-Western countries, have a great interest in seeing that America succeeds in achieving a respectable level of economic growth by the end of this year. Only a strong America can help the poorer nations of the world achieve a decent standard of living.

Although President Bush did propose the establishment of a new USA freedom corps, among other things "to extend American compassion throughout the world," we expect a strong and structured commitment from Washington in overcoming the five major problems of the developing countries, namely availability of potable water; production and distribution of electric power affordable to all; construction of affordable housing; the eradication of major communicable diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria and AIDS, and public education with an emphasis on mastering the basics of digital technology.

To a large degree, the improvement of the social-economic level of poor people throughout the world is also an effective way to eliminate terrorism.