Bush: This is Our World War II

Orwell once wrote that a key feature of blind nationalists is that they are unable to draw correct analogies. I think Bush has shown that Orwell was right (again). But if the war on terrorism is World War II, then what is Abu Ghraib? Is Kuwait analogous to Poland, circa September 1939. Moreover, what will be Bush's Hiroshima? This is getting AWFULLY confusing. Read on.

Addressing Cadets, Bush Sees Parallel to World War II (NY Times)
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

COLORADO SPRINGS, June 2 — President Bush told nearly 1,000 cadets at the United States Air Force Academy on Wednesday that they would soon be part of a struggle against terrorism that he likened to World War II as the historic challenge of the time and "the storm in which we fly."

In a grim commencement speech on a sparkling morning at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, Mr. Bush outlined in the most detail yet what he sees as the continuing threat of terrorism. Rather than expressing any misgivings about the course of the war in Iraq, Mr. Bush emphatically affirmed his belief in striking enemies before they can strike first to protect Americans against Al Qaeda and other terrorist threats.

Quoting from a statement on a Qaeda Web site last year, Mr. Bush said that Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, a spokesman for the terrorist network, wrote: "We have the right to kill four million Americans — two million of them children — and to exile twice as many and wound and cripple hundreds of thousands. Furthermore, it is our right to fight them with chemical and biological weapons."

Mr. Bush warned the crowd of 29,000 gathered in Falcon Stadium that Americans must not lose heart or patience as his administration tries to bring democracy to Iraq and the Middle East. He compared today's efforts to those in Europe immediately after World War II, noting that two years after the Nazi surrender there was still starvation in Germany and reconstruction appeared to be faltering. In 1948, he added, Stalin blockaded Berlin. In 1949, the Soviet Union exploded a nuclear weapon and the Communists in China won their revolution.

"All of this took place in the first four years of the cold war," Mr. Bush said, in a speech that was interrupted intermittently by applause, most of it modest. "If that generation of Americans had lost its nerve, there would have been no `long twilight struggle' only a long twilight."

The phrase Mr. Bush quoted was from President John F. Kennedy's 1961 inaugural address describing the American cold war mission.

Mr. Bush's speech was the second in a series of what the White House is billing as major presidential addresses on Iraq leading up to the transfer of authority from the Americans to a new Iraqi government on June 30. The president's remarks appeared to try to strike a balance between frightening Americans and offering himself as the only choice to lead the nation out of danger and to shore up his credentials as commander in chief in an election year when polls show support for the Iraq war and his presidency declining.

Mr. Bush outlined what he called a four-part strategy for fighting terrorism, all of it pre-existing policy. The United States, he said, will use "every available tool" to dismantle and destroy terrorists and their organizations, deny them places of sanctuary and support, stop them from obtaining chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, and deny them "the ideological victories they seek by working for freedom and reform in the broader Middle East."

Mr. Bush also tried to answer critics who say that his policies and the war in Iraq have simply created more terrorists.

"No act of America explains terrorist violence, and no concession of America could appease it," Mr. Bush said. "The terrorists who attacked our country on Sept. 11, 2001, were not protesting our policies. They were protesting our existence."

If America were not fighting terrorists in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, Mr. Bush said, "What would these thousands of killers do — suddenly begin leading productive lives of service and charity?" He added, "Would the terrorists who beheaded an American on camera just be quiet, peaceful citizens if America had not liberated Iraq?"

Mr. Bush opened his series of speeches about Iraq with an address last week at the United States Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., where he outlined the shape of the new Iraqi government. This Sunday, he is to make a speech in Normandy on the 60th anniversary of the D-Day invasion, and deliver another address at a summit meeting of the world's leading industrialized democracies in Sea Island, Ga., later next week.

Last will be a speech at a NATO summit meeting in Istanbul at the end of the month, just before the restoration of sovereignty in Iraq.

Casting forward to his D-Day speech, Mr. Bush told the cadets that "on this day in 1944, General Eisenhower sat down at his headquarters in the English countryside and wrote out a message to the "Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Forces" who would soon be invading Normandy. Mr. Bush said Eisenhower wrote that "the eyes of the world are upon you" and "the hopes of prayers or liberty-loving people everywhere march with you."

Mr. Bush omitted the first line of Eisenhower's message, which was, "You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months."

The president used the word "crusade" once soon after the Sept. 11 attacks to describe the campaign against terrorism, and it was criticized in the Arab world for its association with the medieval struggle between Christians and Muslims.

Mr. Bush said that the conflict "will take many turns, with setbacks on the course to victory," but he recalled former President Ronald Reagan's words that "the future belongs to the free." At the end, he invoked Eisenhower once again.

"The eyes of the world are upon you," Mr. Bush told the cadets. "You leave this place at a historic time, and you enter this struggle ahead with the full confidence of your commander in chief."

The motto of the graduating class was "Ready for War."

"I'm always really careful when I say that," said one cadet, Ben Buchta, 22, from Medford, Ore. "And, I honestly really didn't ever say that with a real true heart until today because I had not matured fully until today. And, `Ready for War,' that's a serious statement. I don't really want to go, but I will go. That's why we're here."

Posted by Palabris at June 3, 2004 08:19 AM