President Bush:The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.
It is exactly what the president was referring to.
How are the United States, for example, dependent upon other lands for the survival of our institutions, which by their very nature grow out of our culture, not their cultures? We are stronger than the lands Mr. Bush would reform. How are we dependent upon their Governments for maintaining our own ways?
On the other hand, the spread of free elections in the Near East may pose some new threats to our existing relationships. We have friendly relations with both Israel and Egypt, since Jimmy Carter brokered a peace deal between the two. While an unopposed Mubarak and a politically fairly savvy Israeli electorate both see their interest in getting along with America--actually we have been bribing both for 25 years to do so--the Egyptian public could quickly prove a loose cannon, as Demagogues vie for advantage, and play the Israelis as a scape goat for Egyptian problems. Do you think that an elected Nasser type, perhaps closing the Canal to our shipping as part of a statement, would make American interests more secure than Mubarak?