June 28, 2005
Dial 911
The President reminds the nation how we got here, panic ensues...
The President's televised address on Iraq and the war on terror in general was what we've come to expect from him - he spends most of the time sounding like a man reading a speech. But there are moments where you can see he isn't reading someone else's words, but is speaking them as his own, and the effect is powerful. But the only thing some ears heard in the speech were the forbidden words "Iraq" and "September 11th" in the same paragraph.
Breathless may be the best way to describe the reaction of some pundits and Democrats to the President's speech. The claim? That the President "tied" Iraq to 9/11, with the clear intonation that the President sought to justify our presence in Iraq as being directly connected to complicity in the September 11th attacks.
Poppycock.
Not only is the question of why we invaded Iraq of questionable relevance anymore - this event occurred, the regime toppled, this rubicon passed - but the President's remarks about September 11th in no way attempt to create or imply any causitive link between the attack itself and Iraqi involvement in it.
Let's show the statements that are in question:
"The troops here and across the world are fighting a global war on terror. The war reached our shores on September 11, 2001."
"After September the 11th, I made a commitment to the American people: This nation will not wait to be attacked again."
"The only way our enemies can succeed is if we forget the lessons of September the 11th, if we abandon the Iraqi people to men like Zarqawi and if we yield the future of the Middle East to men like bin Laden."
"They are trying to shake our will in Iraq, just as they tried to shake our will on September 11, 2001. They will fail."
"After September 11, 2001, I told the American people that the road ahead would be difficult and that we would prevail."
It requires the most tendentious nature to offer that the above statements were meant to justify the Iraq War as retaliation for the 9/11 attacks - but this is what is implied by the phony consternation eminating from many on the left. The President did not, nor will he, attempt to cast his decision to invade Iraq as some sort of get-even for 9/11. What this President does get, and most on the left don't, is that 9/11 wasn't a singly bad day, a single event or moment in time. It was in fact a new stage in a long brewing conflict between Islamist radicalism and the West, the United States in particular as leader of the free world and strong supporter of Israel. Terror is the weapon of choice in the Middle East, used by innumerable groups for innumerable causes. And this nation must stand against them all or abandon the principles which undergird all the better notions we stand for.
To suggest that after 9/11 the only task before the American people was retribution against those directly responsible for the attack is to commit an act of cognitive irresponsibility and shortsightedness - not to mention prescription-strength stupidity.
Posted by MEC2 at June 28, 2005 11:54 PM