Bush promotes spread of liberty
Washington ? President Bush proclaimed a bold, even revolutionary, foreign policy in his inaugural address Thursday, but he offered no specifics about how he plans to rid the world of tyranny, which tyrants he’ll target or what other foreign or domestic goals he might be willing to sacrifice to promote freedom.
Bush’s declaration that “the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world” was reminiscent of predecessors from Woodrow Wilson to Ronald Reagan, and especially of John F. Kennedy’s 1961 pledge to “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
But while Wilson, Reagan and Kennedy argued that America should battle tyranny because doing so is right, Bush said America must battle tyranny because it can never be safe so long as tyrants rule.
“The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands,” Bush said.
That effort to link the security of Americans in their homes to the promotion of liberty abroad reflects the profound effect that the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks had on Bush’s and much of the nation’s thinking.
So far, however, Bush’s efforts to defeat tyranny have been confined largely to Afghanistan and Iraq, and to a lesser extent to Iran and Syria and the communist regimes in Cuba and North Korea.
In the wake of his speech, is the president now willing to pressure China and risk a trade war that could raise the cost of consumer goods for U.S. citizens and hurt the American economy? Will he pressure pro-American Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who took power in a coup and whose rule is fragile enough as it is?
“These are the countries that people are going to be watching. Not the ones that are enemies” anyway, said Jennifer Windsor, the executive director of Freedom House, a nonpartisan group that promotes democracy worldwide.
Freedom House lists 89 countries, with 44 percent of the world’s population, as “free.” It lists 54 countries as “partly free” and another 49 as “not free.”
President Bush, center, is applauded Thursday on Capitol Hill after being sworn in by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, far right. From left are, Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice President Dick Cheney, Cheney's daughters Elizabeth and Mary, the vice president and Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn.
Nor did Bush specify what means he favors to spread democracy and defeat dictatorship, other than to say, “this is not primarily the task of arms.” He touched only briefly on the deeply troubled U.S. effort to transform Iraq into a stable democracy, which so far has cost 1,360 American lives and $200 billion, and he never mentioned the country by name.
Bush follows a long line of presidents who’ve who interpreted Puritan leader John Winthrop’s 1630 idea of America as a “city upon a hill” to mean that the United States has a unique role to play in sharing liberty with the world.
But Bush may be the first president to declare that the United States cannot be safe unless all others are free.
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