Bush's Big Speech
BARNES, FRED
Bush's Big Speech It was the one at West Point, not the one on homeland security. BY FRED BARNES PRESIDENT BUSH was dumbfounded. When he visited the National Security Agency at Fort Meade,...
...He elaborated on it at West Point, and again the Bush camp was surprised at the meager press attention...
...What was so important about it...
...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...
...If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long," he declared in the speech...
...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...
...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 don't know what they're talking about," he said...
...This was not an idle thought of Bush's that slipped into a speech— quite the contrary...
...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...
...However, this was not a shot prompted by his trip...
...The West Point speech got one story...
...Bush and his advisers were surprised this line drew little attention...
...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...
...The Cold War strategies of deterrence and containment still apply in some instances...
...But new threats also require new thinking," he said...
...That distinction went to Bush's brief talk to the nation on June 6 proposing a vast, new Department of Homeland Security...
...The themes were ones he strongly believes in, an aide said...
...It was part of the speech beforehand...
...Also for the first time, Bush dealt with the war on terrorism on the doctrinal level...
...Bush has developed strong opinions, especially about the need to remove Saddam Hussein from power...
...I was there, sir," the reporter answered sharply...
...Which meant he has plans for Iraq that will trump theirs...
...Every so often a presidential speech excites the Washington press Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...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...
...This is both a word the president had never used before and a strategic concept he hadn't fully articulated...
...A phenomenon of presidential speeches is that comments which begin as mere talking points sometimes wind up as policy...
...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...
...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...
...Instead, America will take "preemptive action when necessary...
...Yet it was an extraordinarily significant speech, far more so than the TV address...
...The president referred the reporter to his commencement address a few days earlier at West Point...
...This is quickly becoming the case with Bush's belief that Islamic countries must inevitably embrace democracy...
...corps and generates extravagant coverage...
...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...
...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...
...A senior White House aide has a one-word answer: "Preemption...
...In that case, Bush said, "I think you need to have listened to my speech...
...Some worry that it is somehow undiplomatic or impolite to speak the language of right and wrong," he said at West Point...
...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...
...In Bush's defense, there were antecedents to each of his themes...
...Of course White House aides always say something like that...
...He spent a month and a half honing the West Point remarks...
...PostSeptember 11, Bush has been the dominant figure in foreign policy...
...The problem was few reporters understood the message of the West Point speech or, in the jargon of Bush aides, "broke the code...
...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 doubt if Bush made this point when Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia visited him in April...
...The West Point address did not...
...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...
...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...
...Deterrence—the promise of massive retaliation against nations— means nothing against shadowy terrorist networks with no nation or citizens to defend...
...Thus, preemption, striking before the enemy does, sooner rather than later...
...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...
...I disagree...
...The president told aides he wanted to be more "explicit" at West Point, and he was...
...I will not stand by as peril grows closer and closer," he said then...
...I think you need to read my speech," he said...
...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...
...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...
Vol. 7 • June 2002 • No. 39
