I Like Ike and Dubya

Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people.

Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings.

We face a hostile ideology -- global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method.

Unhappily the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration.

To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle -- with liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.

President Dwight D. Eisenower



The murderous ideology of the Islamic radicals is the great challenge of our new century. Yet in many ways this fight resembles the struggle against communism in the last century.

Like the ideology of communism, Islamic radicalism is elitist, led by a self-appointed vanguard that presumes to speak for the Muslim masses. Bin Laden says his own role is to tell Muslims, quote, "what is good for them and what is not."

What this man who grew up in wealth and privilege considers good for poor Muslims is that they become killers and suicide bombers. He assures them that this is the road to paradise, though he never offers to go along for the ride.

Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy teaches that innocent individuals can be sacrificed to serve a political vision. And this explains their cold-blooded contempt for human life.

Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy pursues totalitarian aims.

Its leaders pretend to be an aggrieved party representing the powerless against imperial enemies. In truth, they have endless ambitions of imperial domination and they wish to make everyone powerless except themselves.

Under their rule, they have banned books and desecrated historical monuments and brutalized women. They seek to end dissent in every form, to control every aspect of life, to rule the soul itself.

While promising a future of justice and holiness, the terrorists are preparing a future of oppression and misery.

Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy is dismissive of free peoples, claiming that men and women who live in liberty are weak and decadent.

Zarqawi has said that Americans are, quote, "the most cowardly of God's creatures."

But let us be clear: It is cowardice that seeks to kill children, and the elderly with car bombs and cuts the throat of a bound captive and targets worshipers leaving a mosque.

It is courage that liberated more than 50 million people from tyranny. It is courage that keeps an untiring vigil against the enemies of rising democracies. And it is courage in the cause of freedom that will once again destroy the enemies of freedom.

And Islamic radicalism, like the ideology of communism, contains inherent contradictions that doom it to failure.

By fearing freedom, by distrusting human creativity and punishing change and limiting the contributions of half a population, this ideology undermines the very qualities that make human progress possible and human society successful. The only thing modern about the militant's vision is the weapons they want to use against us.

The rest of their grim vision is defined by a warped image of the past, a declaration of war on the idea of progress itself.

And whatever lies ahead in the war against this ideology, the outcome is not in doubt. Those who despise freedom and progress have condemned themselves to isolation and decline and collapse.

Because free peoples believe in the future, free peoples will own the future.

We don't know the course our own struggle will take or the sacrifices that might lie ahead. We do know, however, that the defense of freedom is worth our sacrifice. We do know the love of freedom is the mightiest force of history. And we do know the cause of freedom will once again prevail.

President George W. Bush

Tobyhanna Army Depot, Pennsylavania, November 11 (Veterans's Day)

Their objective is to drive the United States and coalition forces out of Iraq and to use the vacuum that would be created by an American retreat to gain control of the country.

They would then use Iraq as a base from which to launch attacks against America and overthrow moderate governments in the Middle East and try to establish a totalitarian Islamic empire that reaches from Indonesia to Spain.

That's their stated objective. That's what their leadership has said.

These terrorists have nothing to offer the Iraqi people.

All they have is the capacity and the willingness to kill the innocent and create chaos for the cameras.

They're trying to shake our will to achieve their stated objectives. They will fail. America's will is strong. And they will fail because the will to power is no match for the universal desire to live in liberty.

This is an enemy without conscience, and they cannot be appeased.

Against this adversary there is only one effective response: We will never back down, we will never give in, and we will never accept anything less than complete victory.

President George W. Bush

Naval Academy, November 30, Annapolis, Maryland