Watching Bush performing his linguistic gymnastics last night brought to mind Churchill last night, if only in his dissimiliarity to the great orator. Churchill, the great union buster of yore, in one of the most powerful speeches of the twentieth century, reminded people that they shall "fight on the beaches...". As a child of parents who survived the blitz I learned from an early age just how important those motivating words were to my parents, and to the people of England during those dark days.
Last nights speech was a pale shadow of that great speech. He reminded more of a used car salesman pleading with a customer to "trust him" than he was of a wartime leader trying to rally to the cause.
Yet it was right to remove Saddam Hussein from power. He was given an ultimatum, and he made his choice for war. And the result of that war was to rid the world of a murderous dictator who menaced his people, invaded his neighbors, and declared America to be his enemy.
He declared America to be his enemy because due to a blockade which prevented medecine from being imported into his country, food from being imported, hell even ambulances were prevented from being shipped, over a quarter million Iraqi children died between 1992 and 2003.
September 11th, 2001 required us to take every emerging threat to our country seriously, and it shattered the illusion that terrorists attack us only after we provoke them. On that day, we were not in Iraq, we were not in Afghanistan, but the terrorists attacked us anyway -- and killed nearly 3,000 men, women, and children in our own country.
I repeat something I said yesterday, Saddam Hussein was the first Arab leader to condemn the attacks on 9/11, issuing his condemnation before the third plane hit the pentagon. It's irony that Bush uses the word illusion in this passage. It was Bush/Cheney et al who created, through parsed sentences and dodgy wordsmithing, the illusion that Iraq was involved in 9/11.
We are approaching a New Year, and there are certain things all Americans can expect to see. We will see more sacrifice -- from our military, their families, and the Iraqi people.
Of all the gaul, asking the iraqi people to sacrifice more. Over the past 33 months the US has killed between 30,000 and 100,000 thousand Iraqis.
I know that some of my decisions have led to terrible loss -- and not one of those decisions has been taken lightly. I know this war is controversial -- yet being your president requires doing what I believe is right and accepting the consequences.
He talks about accepting the consequences, but he doesn't say how. Will he resign if the casualties increase? Will he send his own daughters over there? How will he accept the consequences? Will he surrender himself to the world court to stand trial for war crimes?
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