President Bush's speech was generally successful, if somewhat disposable. It did what he needed it to do. But he left out two topics which would have made it better, and which could only have helped his election chances.
(1) Abu Ghraib: There was no mention of the subject which gummed up the works in Iraq for so long. The abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib was not an earth-shaking scandal, but it is important, and by talking about it, Bush could have shown how American ideals are just that--values that even we sometimes fail to live up to. He could have shown serious moral purpose by confronting Abu Ghraib in his speech, and he would have been able to further honor the hundreds of thousands of American troops in Iraq who have conducted themselves with nothing but courage and dignity.
(2) The nature of our enemies. John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, and Ron Silver all gave speeches that were remarkable in the clarity of their language. They explained that we are engaged in a war between Islamist extremists and western civilization. This is not a conflict simply between America and some faceless, evil terrorists. Our enemies have a coherent ideology and goal. They do not simply "hate freedom." It goes much deeper than that.
The problem with couching the current conflict in the terms Bush prefers is that their ambiguity lends them to misuse. It becomes easy for those who wish us to appease the Islamists to simply declare that this is a war between America and Islam, and that America is at least partially at fault.
President Bush should have spoken about the nature of the terrorists, about who they are and what they believe. He should have listed the countries where they have recently plied their bloody trade: America, Israel, Turkey, Indonesia, the Philippines. He should have pointed to Russia, where Islamist terrorists have struck again and again, and last night were holding a school full of children hostage.
This war is bigger than America--it is truly a global war. Our enemies understand that. And it would have been helpful to our body politic for the president to say so.
12 hours ago
3 comments:
This paragraph struck home:
"President Bush should have spoken about the nature of the terrorists, about who they are and what they believe. He should have listed the countries where they have recently plied their bloody trade: America, Israel, Turkey, Indonesia, the Philippines. He should have pointed to Russia, where Islamist terrorists have struck again and again, and last night were holding a school full of children hostage."
Especially after yesterday. And the timing is cold-heartedly precise, it would seem.
It's in a similar vein to one you wrote some months back in your weekly email newsletter for the "Weekly Standard". I couldn't argue with the reasoning, though I have argued with many other assertions made in favour of the war in Iraq.
Two points I feel haven't been addressed by the anti-war groups. Firstly, the one you make in the above paragraph. This is not America vs Islam. This terror is quite promiscuous. Secondly, international law, especially with respect to the issue of sovereignty, was toothless enough in relation to rogue or repressive states (re: the ex-Yugoslavia, Zimbabwe, Libya then, and so on). It becomes entirely beside the point if we are talking about amorphous organisations with clear underlining and overarching aims, and no key relationship with any state, rogue or otherwise. That is to say, their continuing existence does not depend on any specific relationship they may have, and thus cannot effectively be the subject of concerted pressure through international consensus.
The Iraq war helped drive me mad. Right ideas, though. Wrong war, maybe.
Given how badly GW Bush treats Europe, I am sure europeans can't wait for his reelection. And we don't share the same values. You are going to be alone on this one.
I realized over the weekend that the accusations against Osama bin Laden were wrong and that he must be innocent.
We have grown accustomed to government officials developing increasingly complex theories of crimes to support their contention that exonerated criminals are actually guilty and that confessions by others with supporting DNA evidence almost never result in admission of error. The person who noticed the bomb during the Atlanta Olympic games and gave warning is still tarred with being accused of terrorism because the US government hasn't gone out of the way to give him hero status for his life saving role.
That Osama was never be mentioned by Dubya or Cheney is certainly proof that their earlier claims of his guilt and their intention to bring him to justice, "dead or alive" was wrong. Furthermore, Dubya did not commit to bring him to justice in the next four years as he did almost three years ago.
Clearly, the Bush adminstration does not see Osama bin Laden as a threat.
Or they have no idea how to deal with him and his followers.
And his followers certainly include many in Pakistan, a former democracy overthrown by its current military dictator, an event that Dubya applauded during his campaign four years ago. Pakistan is where the financial and logistic support came from for setting up the Taliban and the "terrorist training camps" through which those "who hate freedom" passed. Pakistan also supplied critical technology to Libya, North Korea, and Iran.
It seems that Dubya's plan to deal with some terror sponsoring states is to befriend them, but is that a wise strategy?
Or is the strategy one of dividing terror sponsoring states into "good" and "bad" and than draw the new world map with the good terror sponsoring state on the same side of the line as the US to create a new iron curtain. The iron curtain didn't separate the free from the oppressed, but the US and allies from its enemies. Far too many US allies were just as evil as the "evil empire".
What Dubya did't say, says a lot.
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