Last night, President Bush delivered a speech to the National Defense University at Fort Lesley J. McNair. The topic was the War on Terror.
I thought the speech was amazing—or, as Annika put it:
It was a historic speech, and deserves to be considered among this president’s finest. i think the president explained our foreign policy today with more clarity and less defensiveness than he has ever done until now.
Yeah. I think so too.
Especially this part of the speech:
The theory here is straightforward: terrorists are less likely to endanger our security if they are worried about their own security. When terrorists spend their days struggling to avoid death or capture, they are less capable of arming and training to commit new attacks. We will keep the terrorists on the run, until they have nowhere left to hide.
Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Green Party, or Socialist…I don’t care what your affiliation*…I can’t imagine how you could disagree with any part of that quote. Or most of the entire speech for that matter.
If you do not agree with the logic behind statements such as:
Our strategy to keep the peace in the longer term is to help change the conditions that give rise to extremism and terror, especially in the broader Middle East. Parts of that region have been caught for generations in a cycle of tyranny and despair and radicalism. When a dictatorship controls the political life of a country, responsible opposition cannot develop, and dissent is driven underground and toward the extreme.
…then you are an idiot, so blinded by your hatred of President Bush, that you are beyond reasoning with.
Go read the entire post by Annika. Some very wise analysis and some retrospective.
* Ok, if you’re a terrorist, I can understand how you might disagree. Oh, and if you are a terrorist and you happen to be reading my blog: FUCK YOU and DIE.
“Our strategy to keep the peace in the longer term is to help change the conditions that give rise to extremism and terror, especially in the broader Middle East. Parts of that region have been caught for generations in a cycle of tyranny and despair and radicalism. When a dictatorship controls the political life of a country, responsible opposition cannot develop, and dissent is driven underground and toward the extreme.”
Liberals have believed this forever. Amnesty International and Jimmy Carter’s focus on human rights are just a few examples. Opposition to the President doesn’t lay in opposition to his rhetoric- just the hypocrisy of it.
Bush tolerates dictatorships and torture in Uzbekistan and Saudi Arabia as well as allowing torture in our own names. I would state that one of the conditions that gives rise to terror is, indeed, torture of captives. al Qaeda is filled with recruits who were pushed to radicalism by torture. As long as the US outsources torture and no one is held to account for prisoner abuse at abu Graib I cannot take Bush’s rhetoric seriously.
Iraq was a war of choice. We were told that Iraq was in position to threaten our country (and had contributed to the Sept. 11 attacks) so we had inspectors pulled from the country in order to attack it. To re-cast this war as a crusade for democracy is an attempt to redirect us from the false reasons we were given for the war in the first place.
Furthermore- I would like the opportunity to ask Bush if this truly our new world doctrine? Are we invading China? Uzbekistan and Saudi Arabia? (My God, what about Sudan- where the administration has declared genocide!) How much are we willing to spend for this cause?
To be clear, I’m not opposed to the notion of spreading democracy. In fact, I could even be persuaded to the necessity of a military invasion to rid the world of a tyrant. But to parade around claiming that you’re creating the conditions for democracy while condoning human rights abuses and dictatorships seems penny wise and pound foolish at best.
I agree with Preston. Great words, now let’s confront Cuba (dictatorship), China (virtual dictatorship), Saudi Arabia, etc., and fully commit to spreading democracy. We can’t just say we only mean certain areas of the world, we have to be all or nothing, even if it costs us pandas and oil.
It’s much easier to say something than to go ahead and do something. And that is what politicians thrive at.
Could we withstand a panda embargo? We’d have to dip into our stategic reserves.