Posted on 06/08/2002 12:09:46 PM PDT by Pokey78
It was the one at West Point, not the one on homeland security.
PRESIDENT BUSH was dumbfounded. When he visited the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Maryland, last week, he was asked by a reporter if he was "moving Iraq to the back burner," given more urgent trouble in the Middle East and South Asia. The president referred the reporter to his commencement address a few days earlier at West Point. "I think you need to read my speech," he said. "I was there, sir," the reporter answered sharply. In that case, Bush said, "I think you need to have listened to my speech."
Every so often a presidential speech excites the Washington press corps and generates extravagant coverage. The West Point address did not. That distinction went to Bush's brief talk to the nation on June 6 proposing a vast, new Department of Homeland Security. The next day, the Washington Post had four front-page stories on the subject, plus tease lines pointing to two more pieces inside the paper. The West Point speech got one story. The problem was few reporters understood the message of the West Point speech or, in the jargon of Bush aides, "broke the code." Yet it was an extraordinarily significant speech, far more so than the TV address.
What was so important about it? A senior White House aide has a one-word answer: "Preemption." This is both a word the president had never used before and a strategic concept he hadn't fully articulated. Bush touched on it in his State of the Union address last January, saying he will not allow terrorists or nations that harbor terrorists to become a threat to America. "I will not stand by as peril grows closer and closer," he said then. The president told aides he wanted to be more "explicit" at West Point, and he was. "If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long," he declared in the speech. Instead, America will take "preemptive action when necessary." Bush didn't single out Iraq by name, but that's the country he believes already threatens to hand weapons of mass destruction to terrorists or to take action itself. So the speech had a message: Flare-ups may occur in other parts of the world, but the United States won't be distracted from the imperative of military action to remove Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
Also for the first time, Bush dealt with the war on terrorism on the doctrinal level. The Cold War strategies of deterrence and containment still apply in some instances. "But new threats also require new thinking," he said. "Deterrence--the promise of massive retaliation against nations--means nothing against shadowy terrorist networks with no nation or citizens to defend. Containment is not possible when unbalanced dictators with weapons of mass destruction can deliver those weapons on missiles or secretly provide them to terrorist allies." Thus, preemption, striking before the enemy does, sooner rather than later.
This was not an idle thought of Bush's that slipped into a speech--quite the contrary. He spent a month and a half honing the West Point remarks. He was handed a draft before he left for Europe on May 22, worked on the speech on Air Force One, then worked more on the long flight home. The president had opportunities to make some of the points in other speeches, but he specifically saved them for West Point and a military milieu. The themes were ones he strongly believes in, an aide said.
Of course White House aides always say something like that. I've never encountered a presidential aide who said a speech consisted of things the president didn't really endorse or only half-heartedly believed in. In Bush's defense, there were antecedents to each of his themes. The insistence on morality in foreign policy is a persistent Bush topic that became all the more timely after Bush spent a week with jaded European leaders. "Some worry that it is somehow undiplomatic or impolite to speak the language of right and wrong," he said at West Point. "I disagree." However, this was not a shot prompted by his trip. It was part of the speech beforehand.
A phenomenon of presidential speeches is that comments which begin as mere talking points sometimes wind up as policy. This is quickly becoming the case with Bush's belief that Islamic countries must inevitably embrace democracy. In his State of the Union address, he made a fleeting reference to America's support for people who advocate democratic values, "including in the Islamic world." Bush and his advisers were surprised this line drew little attention. He elaborated on it at West Point, and again the Bush camp was surprised at the meager press attention. "The peoples of the Islamic nations want and deserve the same freedoms and opportunities as people in every nation," he said. "Mothers and fathers and children across the Islamic world, and all the world, share the same fears and aspirations." I doubt if Bush made this point when Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia visited him in April. But if he keeps saying it, it will become an issue he'll have to pursue with Arab leaders, probably after Saddam Hussein is ousted.
In the early months of Bush's presidency, he was still a student of foreign affairs with a troika of teachers--Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Post-September 11, Bush has been the dominant figure in foreign policy. At a White House luncheon on the day of the State of the Union, he impressed a group of TV anchors with his discussion of issues and leaders around the world (he pronounced all their names correctly). Bush has developed strong opinions, especially about the need to remove Saddam Hussein from power. While putting the final touches on his West Point speech, he was apprised of an article in the Washington Post by respected military reporter Thomas Ricks. It said the Joint Chiefs of Staff were reluctant to invade Iraq anytime soon, if ever, and had persuaded civilian leaders at the Pentagon to go along. Bush was amazed. "I don't know what they're talking about," he said. Which meant he has plans for Iraq that will trump theirs.
The wise-acre panty-waist reporter who replied "I was there" surely had the smirk wiped off his face by our deft CINC.
I wasn't there, but I heard the speech, and heard his words. The media might have missed it, but I doubt the Iraqi scum-lords did.
I thought so. The WP story was garbage.
Trouble is, the wise-acre panty-waist reporters, all of whome were raised to think military and geopolitical concepts were too awful to study, did not understand "pre-emption".
But the soldiers did.
Pe-emption takes gumption, and moxie...Dubya and his team have both.
God less the USA.
That didn't stop Rush Limbaugh from using it as a platform for a Bush-bashing tirade.
Rush has gone from being insightful and worshipped, to resembling a whiny old broken record grandpa. Bush has made many blunders, but it beats the alternative. Ann Coulter is by far the best...brilliant, hilarious, cutting edge destruction of democrats, not a single bad word about Republicans. I can barely last a minute with Rush now, but I'm on the edge of my seat for a week waiting for each Coulter article.
Just a thought
I don't say this often about Bush but that was downright Reaganesque.
I'm afraid the little lefties will just have to suck it up and be a little uncomfortable. Their comfort level is not worth a few thousand more lives.
So am I. Ann Coulter uses her devilish wit and a willingness to speak the truth about seriously flawed liberal policies and the hypocrites of the left to great success. Rush, on the other hand, is either playing some kind of ratings game, trying to run away from the 'Republican/Bush hack' label or just sour over some real or imagined slight from the president. I really don't care much anymore.
While I parted company with GW Bush on CFR and a few other policies or decisions, I also realise that endless and vicious criticism wears out it's usefulness at some point and simply becomes a droning whine, far more annoying than the original disagreement ever was when carried on for weeks and weeks, as Limbaugh has chosen to do.
Nothing President Bush has done in his presidency will destroy our country or was a criminal act. The eagerness to paint Bush as everything from an idiot to a communist falls flat on the face of the evidence. He's a compromising politician - as he promised to be - ('I'm a uniter, not a divider') with a hostile Congress and a hostile media to deal with. He's doing quite well, so far, and his popularity is based on the reality of his actions. The never-ending angry criticism is useless.
President Bush may not fulfill every conservatives agenda and his willingness to compromise obviously angers some but he's doing an excellent job overall. Limbaugh's animus aside, conservative gains have been made and as the article above shows, Bush is not going to sit by and wait for another serious attack from Arab terrorists. He's gearing up for a destructive preemptive strike, getting the world leaders ready for it as well as the public - and it will come soon, no doubt. He'll take a lot of flack from both sides as he always does (liberals will cry over 'civilian' deaths and more, hard-rightists will ask why we didn't finish off the rest of the mid east while we were at it) but the man is doing the right thing for America.
Rush, you just ain't what ya used to be. You seem to resent the President for his popularity and his success. The President is basically what you have been screaming for. I guess the old Chinese proverb is correct..."Be careful of what you wish for...for you may indeed get it!"
Rush, you have to either accept being a cheerleader rather than a leader...or be regulated to "that dustbin of history".
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