Powerline
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/2005_03.php#009905
Where is Sergeant Friday When We Need Him?
Our old friend AP reporter Jennifer Loven, discussed here and here, is at it again. Today Ms. Loven attacks President Bush's weekly radio address, in which Bush hailed progress toward democracy in the Middle East:
The U.S. military victory against Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq gets the credit for "inspiring democratic reformers from Beirut to Tehran," President Bush said Saturday.
Loven can't let that go by without supplying a little "context":
With his primary rationale for the war — Saddam's alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction — discredited, Bush has turned to the argument that the war in Iraq was justified because it freed the Iraqi people from a brutal dictator and now gives the Middle East a model for democracy.
Well, that's the DNC talking point, all right, and it's not surprising to see Ms. Loven (whose husband was listed on John Kerry's web site as one of Kerry's key supporters) echoing the DNC line. Only, of course, it isn't true. The administration's rationale for the Iraq war was always multiple, and it always included the humanitarian imperative, as expressed by President Bush in this March 2003 speech, as on many other occasions:
We know from recent history that Saddam Hussein is a reckless dictator who has twice invaded his neighbors without provocation -- wars that led to death and suffering on a massive scale. We know from human rights groups that dissidents in Iraq are tortured, imprisoned and sometimes just disappear; their hands, feet and tongues are cut off; their eyes are gouged out; and female relatives are raped in their presence.
As the Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel, said this week, "We have a moral obligation to intervene where evil is in control. Today, that place is Iraq."
Likewise, the strategy of defeating terror by reforming the Arab world was always a key element of the administration's approach to Iraq, as the President explained in November 2003:
This is a massive and difficult undertaking -- it is worth our effort, it is worth our sacrifice, because we know the stakes. The failure of Iraqi democracy would embolden terrorists around the world, increase dangers to the American people, and extinguish the hopes of millions in the region. Iraqi democracy will succeed -- and that success will send forth the news, from Damascus to Teheran -- that freedom can be the future of every nation. (Applause.) The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution. (Applause.)
Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe -- because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty. As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment, and violence ready for export. And with the spread of weapons that can bring catastrophic harm to our country and to our friends, it would be reckless to accept the status quo. (Applause.)
Therefore, the United States has adopted a new policy, a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East. This strategy requires the same persistence and energy and idealism we have shown before. And it will yield the same results. As in Europe, as in Asia, as in every region of the world, the advance of freedom leads to peace. (Applause.)
Loven's revisionist history of the rationale for war is only the beginning of her attack on the President's speech. She also wants to make sure that newspaper readers don't fall for the idea that progress is being made in Iraq:
Bush said "the Iraqi people are taking charge of their own destiny," citing the country's first free and fair elections in its modern history, this week's first meeting of the Transitional National Assembly and the upcoming drafting of a constitution for a "free and democratic Iraq."
Against that progress, insurgents have carried on a relentless campaign of suicide bombings, kidnappings and beheadings while rampant crime, power outages, unemployment over 50 percent and a fuel crisis in one of the world's prime oil-exporting countries continues.
Even as the Iraqi legislators convened, they did not set a new date to meet reconvene, elect a speaker or nominate a president and vice president.
Am I missing something here? Last I knew, the Democrats had an opportunity to respond to the President's weekly address. Aren't mainstream reporters like Jennifer Loven supposed to be reporting on the President's speeches, as opposed to trying to refute them?
Bush's strike at Saddam Hussein was pretty inspired, as a way to re-introduce an air of freedom to a part of the world that has not known much of that aspect of life for a long, long time.
Kicking one of the legs out from under the "axis of evil" will certainly lead to a new equilibrium, and maybe, just maybe, is the boost needed for the reform of the entire culture there.
If Islam either reforms itself, or another religion asserts itself in the region, then that cannot be counted a bad thing. Keeping Islam like it is, with the Wahhabi apostasy, isn't comfortable for anybody.
This hapless so-called reporter at it again.
Anyone watching the Kentucky/Cincinnatti b-ball game tonite?
Cincy has a player named, get this, "Jihad Muhammed" Unbelievable!
Imagine if someone like J.J. Redick changed his name to "Crusader" Redick. The media would be hysterical demanding that he change his name.