The Speech I Wish Bush Would Make
By Gordon Bloyer (06/24/04)
If I could write a speech for President Bush, this would be it. The president has said some of these things already, but just not in the way that I believe that he should say them.
My fellow Americans,
I want to talk to you about the war on terror and its connection to Iraq. I don’t know why some of our American media outlets want to confuse and distort what we are doing in Iraq. The American and coalition forces are the good guys. We have freed the people of Afghanistan and Iraq and yet some in our country would try to portray us as bad and evil. We are not perfect and some of us have made mistakes, but that does not take away from our overall goal. We do not seek empire or conquest. We do not plan to annex countries, as did Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Napolionic France, or the Soviet Union. We are spreading freedom. We are not seizing the assets or oil from these nations.
The New York Times has been trying to undermine our occupation of Iraq. This is not new for the Times. During the occupation of Germany and Japan after World War II, the Times made similar reports. Here are few examples of Times headlines: American Clashes With Germans Grow.....Reich Girls Want Return of Nazism......Germans Reveal Hate of Americans............and We Can Lose the Peace. (At this point, the president should hold up reprints of these articles.) The Times was wrong then and the Times is wrong now. The newspaper claimed then that we had no plan for the occupation, just as the paper does now. The Times claimed that we did not stop the looting. The paper actually claimed that the Soviet Union was doing a better job of occupation in East Germany. The Times seemed to always find that the communists were doing better than we were. The Times reports were wrong then and they are wrong now. The paper claimed that the French and other Europeans were turning against us. The Times wrote........''What happened to the people in the streets throwing flowers?'' Sound familiar? The newspaper even claimed that we had bad intelligence reports about German progress on the Atom Bomb. The headline shouted.........GERMANS FAR BEHIND ON BOMB......the sub headline read......''Dr. Goudsmit says they were not even in the race.'' Was the Times trying to tell us that we should not have invaded Germany because the Germans did not have the big weapon of mass destruction? Isn’t it strange how the editors of the Times always want to find fault with us and not our enemies? What was the truth? We all know how it turned out. The Times was wrong then and it is wrong now.
It is time to end the blame game. Let us get to the crux of the matter. The Times says it wants the truth. The truth is that we went to war with Iraq because the Iraqis invaded Kuwait and signed a cease fire agreement that they never complied with. We, and the United Nations, gave them numerous opportunities to obey the cease fire and they repeatedly refused. They fired on our planes for ten years. The United Nations passed 17 resolutions that they ignored. It was not our obligation to FIND weapons of mass destruction, it was their obligation to lead us to them and then destroy them. They did not do it, and that violated their agreement. For that reason we invaded Iraq.
Many people ask, ''What is the connection to the war on terror?'' There is a connection. After what happened to the American people on Sept. 11, we can no longer issue false threats and false ultimatums. The terrorists take that as a sign of weakness. When the United Nations continued to issue resolutions that were ignored and that the organization would not enforce, it became the obligation of the United States to do it for them.
Why didn’t we get another resolution from the United Nations? We now know that no matter how long we waited for inspectors to find weapons, no matter what Saddam did, two nations were not going to support a war with Iraq. These two nations had financial ties with Iraq and we now know that they were being bribed by Hussein. These nations cannot be trusted to make judgments about Iraq.
Finally, as long as I am president, I will not let any other nation determine how we should defend the United States. I do not need permission from foreign countries to protect our nation. Let me make this clear to our friends in the news media: we are the good guys. You should keep that in mind when writing your stories.
Gordon again:
If the president would give this speech, I think the American people would take care of the rest.
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