"This war," said Bush, "is an ideological struggle. ... To prevail, we must remove the conditions that inspire blind hatred and drove 19 men to get onto airplanes and to come to kill us."
But the "conditions" that drove those 19 men "to come to kill us" is our dominance of their world, our authoritarian allies, and Israel.
They were over here because we are over there.
"What every terrorist fears most is human freedom – societies where men and women make their own choices."
The truth is terrorists do not fear free societies, they flourish in them. The suicide bombers of 9/11, Madrid, and London all plotted their atrocities in free societies. From the Red Brigades, who murdered Italy's Aldo Mori, to the Baader-Meinhoff Gang, who tried to kill Al Haig, to the Basque ETA, the IRA and the Puerto Rican terrorists who tried to assassinate Harry Truman, free societies are where they do their most effective work.
"Free people are not drawn to violent and malignant ideologies,"
During 2006, free Latin peoples brought to power anti-American Leftists Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua and Rafael Correa in Ecuador, and came close to electing their comrades Ollanta Humala in Peru and Andrés Manuel López-Obrador in Mexico.
In the free elections Bush demanded in Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq, the winners were the Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah, Hamas and Shi'ite militants with ties to Iran.
If a referendum were held in the Middle East on the proposition of the US military out and Israel gone, how does Bush think it would come out?
"So we advance our security interests by helping moderates, reformers and brave voices for democracy," said Bush.
But how many of those "moderates" – Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco, Kuwait, the Gulf States – are ruled "by brave voices for democracy"?
Our Islamist enemies would likely endorse unanimously a Bush call for free elections in all those countries, as elections could not but help advance to greater power, at the expense of our friends, those same Islamist enemies.
"The great question of our day is whether America will help men and women in the Middle East to build free societies," said Bush.
But if we bleed our country to give the men and women of the Middle East the freedom to choose the society they wish to live in, are we sure they will not choose a society where Sharia is law? In liberated Afghanistan, popular sentiment was behind beheading a Muslim who converted to Christianity.
What leads Bush to believe everyone wants to be like us? Is it not ideology?
To characterize "the totalitarian ideology" we confront, Bush quoted Osama bin Laden: "Death is better than living on this Earth with the unbelievers among us."
"Give me liberty or give me death!" said Patrick Henry of the Brits remaining in this country that Brits had founded. "Live free or die!" is the motto of the great state of New Hampshire.
This is the heart of the war we are in. Americans believe in freedom first. Millions of Muslims believe in Islam first – submission to Allah. We decide for us. Do we also decide for them?
1 comment:
brilliant amplification of Buchanan's article. Well done, sir.
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