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Bush Goes on the Offensive

August 21, 2007 5:58 PM

ABC News' Ann Compton Reports: In an unusual PR move, Ed Gillespie, the new counselor to the President and a veteran political strategist, has released details of two upcoming speeches in which Bush will prepare the country for the Iraq Progress Report due Sept 15th.

Addressing the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) national convention in Kansas City on Wednesday, President Bush will, as he has done in the past, seek to frame the Iraq war as an ideological struggle.

Speaking to aging veterans who fought the Japanese in WWII, the communists in Korea and Vietnam, Bush argues the doubters never thought democracy would work in Japan.  And they now see that withdrawal from Vietnam left killing fields and a generation of consequences.

President Bush also praises the troops in combat now pledging the govt will provide everything they need to succeed.

By September 15th the administration is required by law to report to Congress on progress since a surge of US forces was ordered last January.  The President told a news conference here in Canada that Iraq still has much to do, but suggesting he does believe there has been some progress both politically and militarily.

Below are the White House excerpts of Wednesday's speech:

"There are many differences between the wars we fought in the Far East and the war on terror we are fighting today. But one important similarity is that at their core, they are all ideological struggles.  The militarists of Japan and the Communists in Korea and Vietnam were driven by a merciless vision for the proper ordering of humanity.  They killed Americans because we stood in the way of their attempt to force this ideology on others. 

Today, the names and places have changed, but the fundamental character of the struggle has not.  Like our enemies in the past, the terrorists who wage war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places seek to spread a political vision of their own – a harsh plan for life that crushes all freedom, tolerance, and dissent.  Like our enemies in the past, they kill Americans because we stand in the way of their goal of imposing this ideology across a vital region of the world.  This enemy is dangerous, this enemy is determined, and this enemy will be defeated. 

We are still in the early hours of the current ideological struggle, but we know how the others ended, and that knowledge helps guide our efforts today.  The ideals and interests that led America to help the Japanese turn defeat into democracy are the same that lead us to remain engaged in Afghanistan and Iraq.  The defense strategy that refused to hand the South Koreans over to a totalitarian neighbor helped raise up an Asian Tiger that is a model for developing countries across the world, including the Middle East.  And the fruit of American sacrifice and perseverance in Asia is a freer, more prosperous, and stable continent – whose people want to live in peace with America – not attack America."

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"In the aftermath of Japan's surrender, many thought it nave to help the Japanese transform themselves into a democracy.  Then as now, the critics argued that some people were simply not fit for freedom.

Some said Japanese culture was inherently incompatible with democracy.  Joseph Grew, a former U.S. ambassador to Japan who served as Truman’s undersecretary of state, told the President flatly that "democracy in Japan would never work.""

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"Other critics argued that democracy could not succeed in Japan because the national religion, Shinto, was too fanatical and rooted in the Emperor...Today, in defiance of the critics, Japan retains its religious and cultural traditions and stands as one of the world's great free societies.

Critics also complained when America intervened to save South Korea from Communist invasion.  Then as now, critics argued that the war was futile, that we never should have sent our troops in, or that America's intervention was divisive here at home."

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"Many of these criticisms were offered as reasons for abandoning our commitments in Korea.  While it is true that the Korean War had its share of challenges, America never broke its word.  Today, we see the result in the stark contrast of life on the Korean Peninsula.  Without America’s intervention during the war – and our willingness to stick with the South Koreans after the war – millions of South Koreans would now be living under a brutal and repressive regime.  The Soviets and Chinese Communists would have learned the lesson that aggression pays.  And the world would now be facing a larger, stronger, and more implacable enemy.   

Instead, South Korea is a strong, democratic ally of the United States.  South Korean troops are serving side-by-side with American forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.  And America can count on the free people of South Korea to be lasting partners in the ideological struggle against the extremists.

Finally, there was Vietnam.  This is a complex and painful subject for many Americans, and the tragedy of Vietnam is too large to be contained in one speech.  So today I will limit myself to one argument that has particular significance today.  Then as now, people argued that the real problem was America’s presence and that if we would just withdraw, the killing would end."

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"Many argued that if we pulled out, there would be no consequences for the Vietnamese people.  In 1972, one antiwar Senator put it this way:  "What earthly difference does it make to nomadic tribes or uneducated subsistence farmers in Vietnam or Cambodia or Laos, whether they have a military dictator, a royal prince or a socialist commissar in some distant capital that they have never seen and may never even have heard of?"" 

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"The world would learn just how costly these misimpressions would be.  In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge began a murderous rule in which hundreds of thousands of Cambodians died by starvation, torture, or execution.  In Vietnam, former American allies, government workers, intellectuals, and businessmen were sent off to prison camps, where tens of thousands perished.  Hundreds of thousands more fled the country on rickety boats, many of them going to their graves in the South China Sea. 

Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left.  Whatever your position in that debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like "boat people," "re-education camps," and "killing fields."

There was another price to our withdrawal from Vietnam, and we can hear it in the words of the enemy we face in today’s struggle – al Qaeda.  In an interview with a Pakistani paper after the Nine Eleven attacks, Bin Laden declared that "the American people had risen against their government’s war in Vietnam. They must do the same today."  His number two man, Zawahiri, has also invoked Vietnam.  In a letter to al Qaeda’s chief of operations in Iraq, Zawahiri pointed to "the aftermath of the collapse of the American power in Vietnam and how they ran and left their agents."  Zawahiri later returned to this theme, declaring that the Americans “know better than others that there is no hope in victory.  The Vietnam specter is closing every outlet.”  Here at home, some can argue our withdrawal from Vietnam carried no price to American credibility – but the terrorists see things differently."   

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"I recognize that history cannot predict the future with absolute certainty.  But history does remind us that there are lessons applicable to our time.  In Asia, we saw freedom triumph over violent ideologies after the sacrifice of tens of thousands of American lives – and that freedom has yielded peace for generations.  …  The advance of freedom in these lands should give us confidence that the hard work we are doing in the Middle East can have the same results we have seen in Asia – if we show the same perseverance and sense of purpose."

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"There is one group of people who understand the stakes: our men and women in uniform.  …  And today they are carrying out a surge that is helping bring former Sunni insurgents into the fight against Al Qaeda, clearing the terrorists out of population centers, and giving families in liberated Iraqi cities their first look at decent and normal life.  Our troops are seeing this progress on the ground.  And as they take the initiative from the enemy, they have a question:  Will their elected leaders in Washington pull the rug out from under them just as they are gaining momentum and changing the dynamic on the ground in Iraq?  My answer is clear:  We will support our troops, we will support our commanders, and we will give them everything they need to succeed."

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"Prevailing in this struggle is essential to our future as a Nation.  The question now before us comes down to this:  Will today’s generation of Americans resist the deceptive allure of retreat – and do in the Middle East what veterans in this room did in Asia?"

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"Today the violent Islamic extremists who fight us in Iraq are as certain of their cause as the Nazis, Imperial Japanese, and Soviet Communists were of theirs.  And they are destined for the same fate.  The greatest weapon in the arsenal of democracy is the desire for liberty written into the human heart by our Creator.  So long as we remain true to our ideals, we will defeat the extremists in Iraq and help that country's people stand up a functioning democracy in the heart of the Middle East.  When that hard work is done and the critics of today recede from memory, the cause of freedom will be stronger, a vital region will be brighter, and America will be safer."

August 21, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (8)

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