Say Anything ... To Win
Even by the standards of American politics, President Bush's promise to Iowa voters that the next four years will be peaceful is extraordinarily audacious.
1. No president can say whether there will be war or peace on his watch. Look no further than Woodrow Wilson, who promised the voters in 1916 he"kept us out of war" and then promptly dragged the country into war after his inauguration a few months later.
2. This president has warned us that the war on terrorism will go on for years and years. What happened to that war? Did we win it? Is it over? Did I miss the announcement of victory? Or is President Bush saying that the war on terrorism can go on while we continue to live in peace?
3. And what about North Korea? Has North Korea agreed to disarm? Is the threat from North Korea lessening now that the country is known to have increased its stockpile of nuclear material? Did the North agree not to give terrorists nuclear bombs?
If President Bush has answers to these questions, let's hear them. If not, he should immediately withdraw his ill-conceived promise of peace.
FDR in the 1940 campaign promised he would never send American boys into a foreign war. His advisors thought he had made a mistake. FDR rationalized that if we were attacked, it would no longer be a foreign war. He was wrong to make the promise he made. The American people were right to forgive him. They had wanted peace at any cost in the 1930s while FDR had maneuvered to give Great Britain the assistance needed to fight Hitler. After Pearl Harbor Americans knew FDR had been right to come to the aid of Great Britain and they had been wrong to resist.
But President Bush has not been in a similar position. Before 9-11 he had largely ignored the threat terrorists posed. After 9-11 he reacted as most Americans did after Pearl Harbor. Like the country at large he recognized a threat to our national security and made war on our enemies. (I am referring to the war against al Qaeda and the Taliban, not the attack on Iraq.) He deserves no points for going after our enemies once they had attacked us. Any president would have done so.