US President Bush compared the war against terrorism to the struggle against tyranny that forced World War II, telling new Air Force officers Wednesday that America and its allies can win the battle by bringing freedom and reform to the Middle East.
"Our goal, the goal of this generation, is the same" as it was in World War II, Bush said. "We will secure our nation and defend the peace through the forward march of freedom."
Bush told 981 graduates of the Air Force Academy that they will be joining a war whose central front is Iraq and the broader Middle East.
"Just as events in Europe determined the outcome of the Cold War," the US leader said, "events in the Middle East will set the course of our current struggle."
"If that region is abandoned to dictators and terrorists, it will be a constant source of violence and alarm, exporting killers of increasing destructive power to attack America and other free nations," Bush conveyed. "If that region grows in democracy and prosperity and hope, the terrorist movement will lose its sponsors, lose its recruits and lose the festering grievances that keep terrorists in business."
Bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq, Bush has claimed, will undercut the stagnation and despair that "feeds the extremist ideologies of al-Qaeda and its terrorist allies."
Defending his focus, Bush said, "Some who call themselves realists question whether the spread of democracy in the Middle East should be any concern of ours. But the realists in this case have lost contact with a fundamental reality: America has always been less secure when freedom is in retreat; America is always more secure when freedom is on the march." (Albawaba.com)
© 2004 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
