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To the President's radio address, I've added my comments in bold. President's Radio Address, September 30, 2006 THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. Today I want to talk to you about a matter of national security that has been in the news -- the National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism. The NIE is a classified document that analyzes the threat we face from terrorists and extremists. Parts of this classified document were recently leaked to the press. That has created a heated debate in our Nation's capital, and a lot of misimpressions about the document's conclusions. I believe the American people should read the document themselves and come to their own conclusions, so I declassified its key judgments. The National Intelligence Estimate confirms that we are up against a determined and capable enemy. The NIE lists four underlying factors that are fueling the extremist movement: first, long-standing grievances such as corruption, injustice, and a fear of Western domination; second, the jihad in Iraq; third, the slow pace of reform in Muslim nations; and fourth, pervasive anti-Americanism. It concludes that terrorists are exploiting all these factors to further their movement. No where in his speech does the president dispute these motivations. If they are valid, then how does staying the course mitigate them? Some in Washington have selectively quoted from this document to make the case that by fighting the terrorists in Iraq, we are making our people less secure here at home. This argument buys into the enemy's propaganda that the terrorists attack us because we are provoking them. Merely because our enemies promote this argument, it doesn't follow that the argument is false. This is in itself an old propaganda technique. Here is what Prime Minister Tony Blair said this week about that argument: "This terrorism isn't our fault. We didn't cause it. It's not the consequence of foreign policy." Prime Minister Blair is right. That is a simplistic half truth. Cause and effect in history is complex and goes back sometimes a millenia. The terrorists, for example, frequently invoke the crusades of the middles ages as a reason for their hate. To the question: do they hate us for what we are-- a democratic, secular, liberal nation-- or for what we've done-- supporting Israel and Middle Eastern plutocracies-- the correct answer is: both. Both feed into their hate. It's incorrect to state that policies undertaken by the west in recent years had no effect on the depth of the terrorist's hate to us. We do not create terrorism by fighting terrorism. The terrorists are at war against us because they hate everything America stands for, and because they know we stand in the way of their ambitions to take over the Middle East. Common sense tells us that we do indeed create terrorists by fighting terrorism, because of our tactics and the nature of the Middle Eastern tribal mind that venerates Lex Talonus-- an eye for an eye. In the name of spreading democracy through Iraq, countless innocent people have lost their lives, and this had radicalized as never before a generation sworn to kill Americans. The number of terrorists is not a fixed sum, wherein if we kill enough, the problem disappears. Rather, it's a cancer that perversely metasizes as and because we try to kill it. We are fighting to stop them from taking over Iraq and turning that country into a safe haven that would be even more valuable than the one they lost in Afghanistan. Put yourself in the shoes of the average Middle Eastern peasant. Could it be that one of their motivations is to fight for the temples of their gods and the graves of their fathers? If 150,000 Moslem troops occupied Texas, which one of us would not do what we we can to rid our country of the occupier? Iraq is not the reason the terrorists are at war against us. Our troops were not in Iraq when terrorists first attacked the World Trade Center in 1993, or when terrorists blew up our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, or when they bombed the USS Cole, or when they killed nearly 3,000 people on September the 11th, 2001. Five years after the 9/11 attacks, some people in Washington still do not understand the nature of the enemy. The only way to protect our citizens at home is to go on the offense against the enemy across the world. When terrorists spend their days working to avoid capture, they are less able to plot, plan, and execute new attacks on our people. So we will remain on the offense until the terrorists are defeated and this fight is won. But what is winning and how can we win so long as we continue by our mere presence to inspire another generation to rise up against us? In the Darwinian process that war creates, terrorists are going to get harder, more ruthless, and more cunning, so long as we maintain our presence. In my recent speeches, I've said we are in the early hours of a long struggle for civilization, and that our safety depends on the outcome of the battle in Iraq. The National Intelligence Estimate declares "perceived jihadist success there would inspire more fighters to continue the struggle elsewhere." It also says that "Should jihadists leaving Iraq perceive themselves, and be perceived, to have failed, we judge fewer fighters will be inspired to carry on the fight." It can only be disturbing that we are in the early hours of the long war. If so, our policy is doomed. An axiom of foreign policy is that it cannot be sustained if it lacks home-front support. While Americans give the benefit of doubt to their commander in chief, history is clear: Americans will reject a policy that results in quagmire, especially one in which a mere fragment of the population is making a sacrifice. The reality is that most Americans don't think that the Iraq war in integral to the war on terrorism. They realize that if by presidential edict, every American left Iraq tomorrow, their lives wouldn't change and possibly we may become more secure as this removes a key motivation for terrorism. Withdrawing from Iraq before the enemy is defeated would embolden the terrorists. It would help them find new recruits to carry out even more destructive attacks on our Nation, and it would give the terrorists a new sanctuary in the heart of the Middle East, with huge oil riches to fund their ambitions. America must not allow this to happen. We are a Nation that keeps its commitments to those who long for liberty and want to live in peace. We will stand with the nearly 12 million Iraqis who voted for their freedom, and we will help them fight and defeat the terrorists there, so we do not have to face them here at home. The president constantly asserts but hasn't proved that we fight them over there so we don't fight them over here. That would be news to the British with their bus bombings or the Spanish with their train bombings. Unilateral withdrawal may indeed embolden terrorists in Iraq. But it doesn't follow that there will be more terrorism either in Iraq or in the West. Thank you for listening. And thank you for reading this. |