Thursday, December 15, 2005
iraq
I don't want to shock or upset anyone but a speech that President Bush gave yesterday at the Woodrow Wilson Center in the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington DC differs significantly from what news outlets are reporting. It is well worth reading in its entirety (here). It was a better speech, a more carefully reasoned speech and a more interesting speech than one would expect from what one hears about it. Among other things, partly in defense of our being in Iraq at all, he pointed out that
"We were not in Iraq in 1993, when the terrorists tried to blow up the World Trade Center in New York. We were not in Iraq in 1998, when the terrorists bombed our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. We were not in Iraq in 2000, when the terrorists killed 17 American sailors aboard the USS Cole. There wasn't a single American soldier in Iraq on September the 11th, 2001, when the terrorists murdered nearly 3,000 people in the worst attack on our home since Pearl Harbor."On this day of free and inclusive elections in Iraq, it is also worth joining in Mr Bush's call to
"honor [those who have died in Iraq] by acknowledging that their sacrifice has brought us to this moment: the birth of a free and sovereign Iraqi nation that will be a friend of the United States, and a force for good in a troubled region of the world."Supporters, opponents and those of us who are perhaps unsure about the war - all of us - should pause for a moment today and wish them well as "the story of freedom . . . in the Middle East" takes a giant step forward.
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