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Jewish World Review Feb. 9, 2005 / 30 Shevat, 5765 Echoes of a speech long ago By Tony Blankley
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
President Bush's State of the Union Address last Wednesday included the most
audacious presidential foreign policy utterances since President Kennedy's
demand that the Soviet Union remove its atomic weapons from Cuba in 1963.
The impact of President Bush's words may be at least as historically
consequential as Kennedy's.
This follows on his Inaugural Address, in which he put forward the principle
that will undergird his foreign policy, to wit: Our security requires all
tyrannies in the world to be converted into democracies, ultimately. In the
days following that address, some of his senior aides and his father, the
former president, tried to soften those words, suggesting there was nothing
really new about them. After last Wednesday's SOU speech, it is safe to say
those softening or backpedaling explanations are now nugatory.
The SOU speech began to lay out the programmatic expression of the Inaugural
Address's general propositions.
To Syria, the president said: "We must confront regimes that continue to
harbor terrorists and pursue weapons of mass murder. Syria still allows its
territory, and parts of Lebanon, to be used by terrorists who seek to
destroy every chance of peace in the region, and we expect the Syrian
government to end all support for terror and open the door to freedom."
Notice the verbs he used: "must confront," "we expect," "to end."
To Iran, he said: "Today, Iran remains the world's primary state sponsor of
terror, pursuing nuclear weapons while depriving its people of the freedom
they seek and deserve. The Iranian regime must give up its uranium
enrichment program and any plutonium reprocessing, and end its support for
terror. And to the Iranian people, I say tonight: As you stand for your own
liberty, America stands with you."
There is only one word that describes each of those two statements:
Ultimatum — a final demand, the rejection of which will end negotiations
and cause a resort to force or other action. The president has not left much
to talk about, other than the technical procedures by which the uranium
programs and terror support programs are to be dismantled.
The only other thing missing from President Bush's statement is an express
deadline by which his demands must be acceded to. But, given that the
Iranians have not denied the existence of their nuclear programs, and given
that the world can observe the terrorists activities of Syria and Iran, the
implicit deadline for action must be measured in months, not years.
It is very rare for the leader of a sovereign nation to give such detailed
and unconditional instructions to another sovereign nation. If such demands
are not met, the demanding country has two choices: take coercive action to
effect the demands without the voluntary actions of the other country, or
back down from the demands, and be seen by the world as a nation that makes
idle threats.
The case of Iran is made even more piquant by President Bush's express
invocation to the Iranian people that America will stand with them if they
stand for their own liberty. The Iranian regime can only read that statement
as meaning that even if the Iranian government acceded to President Bush's
demands on uranium and terror programs, America would support rebellion
against the regime: a rebellion he encouraged last Wednesday night. After
all, what else than rebellion can "standing for liberty" mean in a country
in which ultimate power and authority reside in an un-elected theocratic
oligarchy?
But the president wasn't finished with his audacity. While not quite
ultimata, Mr. Bush's words to Egypt and Saudi Arabia — that they should
lead by example the way to democracy in the Middle East — certainly
pressures, and perhaps begins to destabilize, our two strongest Muslim
allies in the Middle East.
President Bush's words to Syria and Iran are even tougher than Ronald
Reagan's famous words to Gorbachev, which were, unlike President Bush's
words, stated in the conditional mode: "If you seek peace, if you seek
prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek
liberalization: Come here to this gate, Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr.
Gorbachev, tear down this wall."
President Bush's ultimatum is justified, because no other plausible response
to the mortal threat posed by Islamist and rogue state terrorism has yet
been put forward. (We are in a vicious cycle: Syrian and Iranian-supported
terrorists undermine Israeli/Palestinian peace efforts, which leave that
conflict burning, further encouraging radical Islamists to recruit ever more
terrorists.) Certainly the Democrats and the Europeans have not suggested
any strategy (except denial and appeasement) to protect America from such
dangers.
But in a dangerous world, even the best plans are fraught with danger, and
there is no point in denying the dangers that await the play-out of the
president's words. Perhaps effective economic sanctions can be put in place
promptly. Perhaps Syria and Iran will thus comply sometime this year with
Mr. Bush's demands. But probably Europe will undercut any effective economic
coercion of Syria and Iran. And probably, later this year, President Bush
will have to act on his demands or be seen by the world to be a paper tiger.
All this suggests that we need to rapidly increase our Army and Marine
infantry troop strength. Our armed forces are already stretched thin, and I
fear we have not yet begun to fight.
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