Examines issues of the day against a triumvirate of core principles: liberty, responsibility and justice.
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This is where you stick random tidbits of information about yourself.
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Tuesday, June 08, 2004
So I met Ari Fleischer today and he told a couple of interesting stories that capture Bush's genuine friendship to the Jewish people and stalwart support for Israel. Having garnered only 19% of the Jewish vote in 2000, he has not been doing this for political purposes but from his own strong sense of what is right and just. More importantly, Bush's Mideast strategy tears down the decades-old, and now discredited, policies of accomodation that have led us to where we are today. Only a free Arab world will guarantee security in the future, and only Bush will pursue such a radical, and necessary, policy. First the 3 Fleischer anecdotes.........
In March 2003, Bush was meeting with an Arab leader in the White House and told that leader that dealing with Yasser Arafat was a dead end and the Palestinians needed a different leader. Arafat was corrupt and not interested in peace. The Arab leader agreed with Bush, that Arafat was a problem, but told him that this was the situation and they just had to deal with it. Bush replied that this was unacceptable and that the Palestinians needed a new leader. The Arab leader repeated his agreement, but said there was nobody to replace Arafat and they had to just deal with him. He said that, unless Bush could name a potential replacement, they would just have to maintain the status quo. Bush told this Arab leader that he himself, the American president, had more faith in the Palestinian Arabs to produce an alternative to Arafat than did the Arab leader. Bush said it was not important that he know who it could be, but that it was up to those 2 leaders, Bush and the Arab, to create an environment where the alternative could emerge. So, whereas Arafat was the most frequent visitor to the White House during the Clinton administration, Bush has refused to meet with him, pushed him aside, and allowed Israel to restrict him to his 2 rooms in Ramallah, isolated from the diplomatic circuit to which he was accustomed.
On a trip to Europe, George and Laura Bush toured Auschwitz with a private guide. Ari Fleischer was the only other person in their group (Powell, Rice and others were in another group behind them) and it was his job to record the President's actions and comments. Bush made a statement to the press about how important it was not just to say "never again," but that anti-Semitism was growing in Europe again and it was critical to fight it. Keeping in mind that in a couple of days he was to travel to France, he stressed this point because of the surge in violent acts against Jews there. That night, he called Ari Fleischer in his hotel room to make sure that the press had picked up on that key point. Sadly, the press did not. (On his state visit to the UK last year, Bush, in his 2 major speeches, specifically mentioned the scourge of anti-Semitism and that it must be snuffed out. Also, he recalled the US delegation from the UN's 2001 conference in South Africa that was supposed to be about combating racism, but ended up as an Israel-bashing convention.)
After many attacks by Hezbollah from Syrian-controlled Lebanon, Israel finally reacted by bombing terrorist targets in Syria. The whole world, of course, condemned Israel and expected the US to make statements demanding "restraint" or urging Israel not to continue the "cycle of violence." Bush, as he has done throughout his presidency, reiterated Israel's right to defend itself and rejected any claims of moral equivalence or of the need to show "even-handedness" between a democratic state and a group of terrorist thugs.
All told, George W. Bush, who has been denounced for his "unilateralism" and his unwillingness to follow along with the course preferred by diplomats, Europeans and "internationalists," has often stood alone in support of Israel. Despite the preferences of the EU and UN crowd, Bush chooses to stand for what is right, even if it means standing alone. Would a President Kerry have the courage to stand alone? Would a President Kerry have the conviction to stand against the EU and UN? Would a President Kerry boycott a UN conference? Would a President Kerry, who denounces Israel's security fence to Arab groups in Michigan ("we don't need another barrier to peace") and then praises it to Jewish groups in a press release ("Israel's security fence is a legitimate act of self defense"), refuse to pressure Israel for "restraint?" Would a President Kerry lecture the European sophisticates he so admires about anti-Semitism? Would a President Kerry, who worships at the altar of consensus and stability, shake up the Middle East by demanding democratic reform so that there would be another type of Arab government besides (a) tyrannies that hate America and use us as distractions and scapegoats for their own problems and (b) tyrannies that are allied with America and whose people hate us because we support their oppressors?
When conventional wisdom once determined that we should accommodate, coexist and seek detente with evil, Ronald Reagan taught us that calling evil by its name, pursuing victory over it and liberating the people whom it oppressed would ultimately make us safer. Likewise George W. Bush rejects the conventional wisdom, that we must manage the terror problem and tolerate the tyranny that characterizes the Arab world and that spawns terror, in favor of a forward-leaning, active strategy to transform that part of the world in the same way Reagan transformed the Soviet empire. We are on the cusp of Earth-changing events that could effect such change, and Bush needs another term to firmly set us on the path on which we are now only barely traveling so that a President Kerry will not take us back to the formula that has led to decades of Arab terror.
6/08/2004 07:59:00 PM
Monday, June 07, 2004
Though the media decline to point out the obvious, the simultaneous tributes to D-Day veterans and Ronald Reagan are of enormous value not so much as history, but as lessons for our day.
While conventional wisdom once determined that we should accommodate, coexist and seek détente with evil, Ronald Reagan taught us that calling evil by its name, pursuing victory over it and liberating the people whom it oppressed would ultimately make us safer.
D-Day reminds us that expending treasure and blood in strange lands to fight evil even before it reaches our shores is not only noble and worthy, but will make us safer, too.
It is maddening that some Europeans and Americans can heap praise for the past, but not learn the lessons that illuminate our future. The parallels to today are striking.
Rather than face a grateful continent that would help America when we need it, we are subjected to the perfunctory, hollow praise of WWII veterans by those who have the greatest debts to repay. They not only use the liberty we restored to oppose America now, but refuse to sacrifice share the blessings of liberty with others. And American leftists are too blinded by rage to see the simple truths that the Reagan revolution revealed.
6/07/2004 09:01:00 AM
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