The New York Times > Washington > News Analysis: President Makes a Case for
Freedom in the Middle East: " President Makes a Case for Freedom in the Middle East

"WASHINGTON, April 13 — Facing a moment of political peril unlike any in the more than one thousand days of his presidency, George W. Bush made the case on Tuesday night for staying the course in Iraq with the language and zeal of a missionary and combined it with a stark warning that failure would embolden America's enemies around the world.

"'We're changing the world,' Mr. Bush said halfway through a speech and news conference that was largely an hourlong justification for holding fast in Iraq, no matter how the casualties mount, no matter how chaotic the process of forming a new government.

"Drawing later on a line he often slips into his campaign speeches, he reminded a global audience that 'freedom is the Almighty's gift to every man and woman in this world. And as the greatest power on the face of the Earth, we have an obligation to help the spread of freedom."

Ruat coeli:"no matter how the casualties mount, no matter how chaotic...we have an obligation to help the spread of freedom." I wonder what sense, if any, he gives to "freedom" or what Americans who buy this think the goal is.

I'm an imperialist too. I'd like to see the whole world made over into the image of the latte-drinking, NY Times-reading, Volvo-driving Eastern Liberal Establishment--everyone educated, reflective and critical, well-read, politically liberal and reasonable. My aim is cultural genocide: to wipe out "traditional societies" and spread the Enlightenment--but that will take a lot of doing in the US as well as abroad. And Bush's policies aren't likely to achieve it.