I know that after a major presidential address you all rush to this site and wait pateintly for words from the oracle. So for what it is worth let me add my two cents.
I think Bush was dead serious and dead on. In the final analysis it is quite simply: we have waited long enough. The risk grows with time and after September 11 we refuse to wait to act. The president was exactly right, “this is not a matter of authority this is a matter of will.” Because of the international community’s inordinate caution – in some cases cowardice – and unwilligness to act the burden falls to the US to do something.
Bush made it clear that we are not a monster in search of blood but that we will bring in our wake food, medicine, and freedom for the Iraqi people. Never before has such millitary force and power been gathered to be used in such a strategic and humane way. We do not seek total war with a enemy nation but rather we see the removal and disarmament of a dictatorial regime that has flaunted the world for far too long. Bush also made it clear that America and America alone speaks and acts for its own security. We will make every effort to work with the international community towards peace and security but in the end responisbility fails to us. Our duty is to act with our own security in mind but in such a way that honors our ideals.
Bush didn’t outline a utopian dream. Sure he expressed the hope that the removal of Saddam Hussein would allow the people of Iraq to return to the status of a free nation whose people’s energies and talents are aimed at their own betterment and not the destruction of others. But he didn’t not promise a clone of America – a perfect democratic capitalist oais in a sea of religous and cruel tyranny. No, he simply affirmed a universal truth: that freedom is better than slavery. He paid the people of Iraq the greatest compliment by aknowleding that as human beings they have that yearning and that right. It is a shame that the cynical and haughty French and the pacifistic and overly-cautious Germans lack the moral immagination to see the power of that simple idea. It seems to me that this action will be carried out with a quintesential American blend of realism and idealism; steely determination to do what is neccesary and what is right.
God Bless George W. Bush. God Bless our troops and those of our allies. And God Bless the United States of America. I know to some that may seem cheesy and over the top. But I mean that with all of my heart. I really don’t care what everyone else thinks, I am proud of my President tonight and I am proud of my country.
P.s. God Bless Tony Blair, he needs all the help he can get.
