PREEMPT THE DANGEROUS/DEMOCRATIZE THE DOWNTRODDEN :

Bush's Big Speech : It was the one at West Point, not the one on homeland security. (Fred Barnes, 06/17/2002, Weekly Standard)

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. [...]

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.

I'm perfectly willing to acknowledge there's a significant amount of wishful thinking going on here, but you get the feeling that if we're all just patient, things are going to work out the way we want them to. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 8, 2002 10:15 AM