Concisely Said

Every day when I read articles on the Web, I read something that is insightful. Someone directs new light on a subject or writes something I think in a direct and thoughtful way. Today, I read an article on Pajamas Media by Youssef M. Ibrahim. He was saying that much of the Islamic world thinks that an Obama presidency would yield great things including America's departure from Iraq, friendship with the Mullahs, and a defanged Israel. Ibrahim thinks Obama needs to burst these bubbles.

The U.S. bonds with Israel transcend any administration and the ascending Islamism of the past decade has become an existential challenge to Western civilization, of which the U.S. is guarantor. That fight is Obama’s as well as McCain’s and that of all future American leaders.

It is my contention that the Bush Doctrine will be a touchstone for future presidents, whether Republican or Democrat because it is the only hope the free world has against this "existential challenge to Western civilization." And America, as has been the case since WWII, is the guarantor.

Land of Bush

I just finished reading Land of Lincoln by Andrew Ferguson. By visiting Lincoln sites, museums, and historical places, as well as meeting with Lincoln buffs, scholars, and even Lincoln haters, Ferguson attempts to understand who Lincoln was, and why people are so passionate about him today.



The more Ferguson looks at Lincoln, the more remote he seems. But in the final chapter he muses on the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial in 1922. Three people spoke at the dedication: former president Taft, president Harding, and finally, Robert Moton, president of the Tuskegee Institute and the son of slaves.

Moton's insight was that the Founders "started on these shores the great experiment of the ages—an experiment in human relations, where men and women of every nation, of every race and creed, are thrown together." It was inevitable that the forces of freedom and the forces of bondage would meet in open conflict. By Lincoln's time, the question was were the principles of freedom of universal application.

Moton further made the point that many people think Lincoln's greatness was in preserving the Union. But that is not necessarily a great claim. The greatness was that he saved a particular kind of Union—a Union based on an idea.

While reading the quote from Moton, I couldn't help thinking of Bush and the Bush Doctrine. Here is Ferguson's quote of Moton from 1922:

"When the last veteran has stacked his arms, when only the memory of high courage and deep devotion remains, at such a time the united voice of grateful posterity will say: The claim of greatness for Abraham Lincoln lies in this, that amid doubt and distrust, against the counsel of chosen advisers, in the hour of the Nation's utter peril, he put his trust in God and spoke the word that gave freedom and to a race and vindicated the honor of a Nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."

When I argue with people who think Bush is the worst president of all time and an immoral war criminal for the War in Iraq, I think about the difference between what President Bush thinks of the people of the Middle East and what the naysayers think of the people of the Middle East. President Bush's proposition is similar to that of President Lincoln: Freedom beats in the heart of every man and woman on earth, and if given the choice, they will choose freedom over bondage. The naysayers argument is basically that those people are always going to be most comfortable in a totalitarian system, and who are we anyway to say what their definition of freedom is.

Lincoln was close to being the president that presided over the dissolution of the Union, and then he would have been the "worst" president of all time. But history did not happen that way.

If the Bush Doctrine fails in the Middle East, I fear that it will be many generations before the people of the Middle East taste the fruits of freedom.