SEP. 24, 2003: BUSH'S UN SPEECH
DAVID FRUMS POLITICAL DIARY National Review
Don’t read the snippy press accounts: Read President Bush’s speech in its entirety, right here.http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/09/20030923-4.html
The press is disappointed because Bush neither apologized to the UN for ignoring it in Iraq, nor pleaded for its support. Instead, he vigorously defended American actions, and gently chided the UN for betraying its own stated principles.
“As an original signer of the U.N. Charter, the United States of America is committed to the United Nations. And we show that commitment by working to fulfill the U.N.'s stated purposes, and give meaning to its ideals.”
The press is covering the speech as if it should have been headlined, “No News Here.” Wrong! The headline is: “No Surrender, No Turning Back. The War Goes On.”
The two most remarkable things about the speech to my ear were each contained in a single sentence. One was Bush’s characteristically unillusioned message about the Arab-Israeli war: “The advance of democratic institutions in Iraq is setting an example that others, including the Palestinian people, would be wise to follow.” He made clear that a Palestinian state is not an entitlement, to be carved out of Israel no matter how atrociously the Palestinians behave. Rather, “The Palestinian people deserve their own state, and they will gain that state by embracing new leaders committed to reform, to fighting terror, and to building peace.” Few ears will have missed the word that was implied but diplomatically omitted: “[T]hey will gain that state only by embracing new leaders committed to reform, to fighting terror, and to building peace.”
The other remarkable statement was the president’s hint about the next front in the war on terror: Iran and its drive for nuclear weapons. “The deadly combination of outlaw regimes and terror networks and weapons of mass murder is a peril that cannot be ignored or wished away. If such a danger is allowed to fully materialize, all words, all protests, will come too late.” Here, and once again, Bush is calling on the United Nations to live up to its own past resolutions and to enforce existing international agreements; once again he is declaring that the United States will enforce them even if the United Nations chooses to do nothing.
“We're determined to keep the world's most destructive weapons away from all our shores, and out of the hands of our common enemies.”
America’s detractors in the world sneeringly call President Bush a cowboy. Not quite. But he does resemble a familiar Western character: The brave man who organizes his neighbors to defend law and preserve order when the sheriff is too cowardly – or too corrupt – to do the job.
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