Transcript of Bush's speech today.
Our "amplified" version includes the president's stray thoughts as he made this historic address.
Since the day President Ronald Reagan set out the vision for this endowment, the world has seen the swiftest advance of democratic institutions in history. And Americans are proud to have played our role in this great story.
Note the past tense. Heh.
Our nation stood guard on tense borders. We spoke for the rights of dissidents and the hopes of exiles. We aided the rise of new democracies on the ruins of tyranny.
Then, because of the law of conservation of tyranny, we selflessly imported that tyranny to our nation on December 12th, 2000, giving up democracy that other nations might be free... or something.
And all the costs and sacrifice of that struggle has been worth it because from Latin America to Europe to Asia we've gained the peace that freedom brings.
Bet you didn't know that "peace" is one of those words with its own opposite meaning, kind of like "sanction." Like "freedom" - there's another one.
In this new century, freedom is once again assaulted by enemies, determined to roll back generations of democratic progress. Once again, we're responding to a global campaign of fear with a global campaign of freedom. And once again, we will see freedom's victory.
Wait a minute, shouldn't that be
we're responding with a global campaign of fear? I always get mixed up when we're talking upside-down language.
I want to welcome former Congressman Dick Gephardt, who is a board member of the National Endowment for Democracy.
It's good to see you, Dick.
And I appreciate Chris Cox, who's the chairman of the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission and a board member for the National Endowment of Democracy, for being here as well.
And I want to thank all the other board members.
Heh, I just called Gephardt a dick.
Bush thanks Dick and Cox and other members. No wonder this ain't going out in primetime.
Recently, our country observed the fourth anniversary of a great evil and looked back on a great turning point in our history.
January 20th, 2001.
We still remember a proud city covered in smoke and ashes, a fire across the Potomac, and passengers who spent their final moments on Earth fighting the enemy. We still remember the men who rejoice in every death, and Americans in uniform rising to duty. And we remember the calling that came to us on that day and continues to this hour.
We will confront this mortal danger to all humanity. We will not tire or rest until the war on terror is won.
The images and experience of September the 11th are unique for Americans. Yet the evil of that morning has reappeared on other days in other places -- in Mombasa and Casablanca and Riyadh and Jakarta and Istanbul, in Madrid, in Beslan, in Taba and Natanya and Baghdad and elsewhere.
In the past few months, we've seen a new terror offensive with attacks in London, Sharm el-Sheikh and a deadly bombing in Bali once again.
All these separate images of destruction and suffering that we see on the new can seem like random and isolated acts of madness. Innocent men and women and children have died simply because they boarded the wrong train or worked in the wrong building or checked into the wrong hotel.
And while the killers choose their victims indiscriminately, their attacks serve a clear and focused ideology, a set of beliefs and goals that are evil but not insane.
Some call this evil Islamic radicalism. Others militant jihadism.
Still, others Islamo-fascism.
I like to call it Muslinazism. Don't ask me to spell any of those. But that's not the point.
Since this is a speech about Iraq, I'll start off with September 11th. Maybe you didn't hear me: September 11th! Boo! 9/11!!!eleven!!! Booga-booga!
We know the vision of the radicals because they've openly stated it in videos and audiotapes and letters and declarations and Web sites.
First, these extremists want to end American and Western influence in the broader Middle East, because we stand for democracy and peace and stand in the way of their ambitions.
Of course they also say it's because we're standing on their land and oil, and standing behind the same tyrannical regimes, but nobody cares about those parts of the tapes. Did I mention 9/11?
Al Qaida's leader, Osama bin Laden, has called on Muslims to dedicate, quote, their resources sons and money to driving infidels out of their lands. Their tactic to meet this goal has been consistent for a quarter century: They hit us and expect us to run.
Send lawyers, sons and money. Heh. One of my Dad's favorite songs. Where was I?
They want us to repeat the sad history of Beirut in 1983 and Mogadooshu in 1993, only this time on a larger scale with greater consequences. Second, the militant network wants to use the vacuum created by an American retreat to gain control of a country, a base from which to launch attacks and conduct their war against non-radical Muslim governments.
Just like they did in Afghanistan after we gave them the arms and training to get the Soviets out of there. But in the absence of a vacuum, they have no choice but to attack our soldiers and anyone friendly to us. See, they're learning to kill our soldiers over there instead of... uh...
The terrorists regard Iraq as the central front in their war against humanity, and we must recognize Iraq as the central front in our war on terror.
Because if there's one lesson this administration learned from September 11th, it's to automatically do whatever the terrorists want.
Third, the militants believe that controlling one country will rally the Muslim masses, enabling them to overthrow all moderate governments in the region and establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia.With greater economic and military and political power, the terrorists would be able to advance their stated agenda: to develop weapons of mass destruction, to destroy Israel, to intimidate Europe, to assault the American people and to blackmail our government into isolation.
Some might be tempted to dismiss these goals as fanatical or extreme. Well, they are fanatical and extreme and they should not be dismissed.
I mean, people dismissed me as fanatical and extreme, and they badly misunderestimated.
Our enemy is utterly committed. As Zarqawi has vowed, We will either we achieve victory over the human race or we will pass to the eternal life.
And so we must make the selfsame commitment.
And the civilized world knows very well that other fanatics in history, from Hitler to Stalin to Pol Pot, consumed whole nations in war and genocide before leaving the stage of history. Evil men obsessed with ambition and unburdened by conscience must be taken very seriously, and we must stop them before their crimes can multiply.
The only way to stop such an enemy is to out-multiply their crimes, out-consume the nations with war and genocide and out-ambition their lack of conscience. Any less and the terrorists will have won on the points.
The radicals depend on front operations such as corrupted charities which direct money to terrorist activity. They are strengthened by those who aggressively fund the spread of radical, intolerant versions of Islam in unstable parts of the world.
And they depend also on those who would sell them arms... What's that Mr Baker? Sorry, I'll just skip that part.
The militants are aided as well by elements of the Arab news media that incite hatred and anti-Semitism, that feed conspiracy theories and speak of so-called American war on Islam with seldom a word about American actions to protect Muslims in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Somalia, Kosovo, Kuwait and Iraq.
See, they're going out there getting the facts on their own, instead of just catapulting our propaganda. That's why I'm also declaring a War on the Truth, but more on that later.
Some have also argued that extremism has been strengthened by the actions of our coalition in Iraq, claiming that our presence in that country has somehow caused or triggered the rage of radicals.
I would remind them that we were not in Iraq on September the 11th, 2001, and Al Qaida attacked us anyway.
Wanna make sure y'all get that last part.
We invaded Iraq because September 11th changed everything. But now that we've invaded, Iraq has nothing to with September 11th.
See, before we invaded Iraq, no terrorists. But now that we're there, lots of terrorists. Who would have attacked us on September 11th, except they weren't there yet. But now that they are, that shows that we had to invade Iraq, in order to provide the justification for the invasion in the first place. Because 9/11 changed everything, including the flow of cau-sa-li-ty.
Or let me put it another way. See, we hadn't invaded Iraq yet. But people were already angry, so they attacked us on September 11th anyway. And my poll numbers went up. So then we went ahead and attacked Iraq just because we were angry. So now that they're even angrier, they attack us even bigger, and my poll numbers go way, way up. See how that works? It's a win-win situation.
The government of Russia did not support Operation Iraqi Freedom, and yet militants killed more than 180 Russian school children in Beslan. Over the years, these extremists have used a litany of excuses for violence: Israeli presence on the West Bank or the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia or the defeat of the Taliban or the crusades of a thousand years ago.
In fact, we're not facing a set of grievances that can be soothed and addressed. We're facing a radical ideology with unalterable objectives: to enslave whole nations and intimidate the world. No act of ours invited the rage of the killers, and no concession, bribe or act of appeasement would change or limit their plans for murder.
That's why we've got to reach the goal of enslave and intimidate before the terrorists. A world enslaved and intimidated by freedom will be a more freedomer world than one controlled by the terrorists. That's why I intend to announce the goal, before this decade is out... Uh... OK we'll save that one for later.
On the contrary, they target nations whose behavior they believe they can change through violence.
See, that explains why they're targeting us.
Against such an enemy there is only one effective response: We will never back down, never give in and never accept anything less than complete victory.
Complete Victory. Don't you like the sound of that? Just like what I said about the whole world. Total, ultimate victory. Yeah.
Like the ideology of communism, Islamic radicalism is elitist, led by a self-appointed vanguard that presumes to speak for the Muslim masses.
Osama bin Laden says his own role is to tell Muslims, quote, What is good for them and what is not. And 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.
Can you imagine if we had people like that here? Self-appointed elite telling people what's good for them; sons of wealth and privilege sending others off to wars they would never serve in themselves. Why, that would be positively un-American. Just like that John Kerry, cravenly earning Silver Stars for a war he didn't even believe in. OK, that was last year. Stay on message Dubya, Miller Time's almost here.
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.
And we have learned this lesson well.
And in spite of this veneer of religious rhetoric,
Veneer of religious rhetoric. Now I like that. Like it lot. Think I'll say it again. Veneer. Of religious. Rhe-to-ric. Yeah, that's nice.
These militants are not just the enemies of America or the enemies of Iraq, they are the enemies of Islam and the enemies of humanity.
We have seen this kind of shameless cruelty before, in the heartless zealotry that led to the gulags and the Cultural Revolution and the killing fields.
Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy pursues totalitarian aims. Its leaders pretend to be in 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 and to control every aspect of life and to rule the soul itself.
Wait a doggone minute, who vetted this speech? Did Code Pink hack my teleprompter or something? Sounds like I'm calling myself a bloodthirsty dictator...
While promising a future of justice and holiness, the terrorists are preparing for a future of oppression and misery.
'Cause we're gonna git `em! They think Gitmo's bad, just wait `til... Oh, now I get it, I'm saying the terrorists are gonna do this I guess. Now how they gonna do all this stuff from some caves in Afghanistan? Even I can tell this is BS. Karl must be yanking my chain again...
By fearing freedom, by distrusting human creativity and punishing change and limiting the contributions of half the population, this ideology undermines the very qualities that make human progress possible and human society successful.
The only thing modern about the militants' 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 decline and collapse.
Damn! There it goes again. I'm shooting myself in the foot here.
Because free peoples believe in the future, free peoples will own the future.
Yeah, like that. Nice little twist there. Everybody's gonna be free, except they'll be owned. Figure that little flip out.
Together, we've killed or captured nearly all of those directly responsible for the September the 11th attacks...
If by "we" you include three of our largest buildings, that is.
Overall, the United States and our partners have disrupted at least 10 serious Al Qaida terrorist plots since September the 11th, including three Al Qaida plots to attack inside the United States. We've stopped at least five more Al Qaida efforts to case targets in the United States or infiltrate operatives into our country.
Let's see, there was that paintball plot, the college student who was going to assassinate me by reading the Koran at me, the guy who was going to unscrew the Brooklyn Bridge, those guys with the funny names and the video cameras taking pictures of the Statue of Liberty...
The United States makes no distinction between those who commit acts of terror and those who support and harbor them, because they're equally as guilty of murder.Any government that chooses to be an ally of terror has also chosen to be an enemy of civilization. And the civilized world must hold those regimes to account.
Unless the regime is the good old US of A, of course.
That ain't gonna happen.
In contrast, the elected leaders of Iraq are proving to be strong and steadfast.
I mean just look at that Chalabi guy. He puts even ole Turd Blossom to shame.
Some observers also claim that America would be better off by cutting our losses and leaving Iraq now. It's a dangerous illusion refuted with a simple question: Would the United States and other free nations be more safe or less safe with Zarqawi and bin Laden in control of Iraq, its people and its resources?
Uh-oh, some smart-aleck is gonna ask me why Osama is still at large. Looks like there won't be any questions today. Again.
Our future and the future of that region are linked. If the broader Middle East is left to grow in bitterness, if countries remain in misery, while radicals stir the resentments of millions, then that part of the world will be a source of endless conflict and mounting danger for our generation and the next. If the peoples in that region are permitted to chose their own destiny and advance by their own energy and by their participation as free men and women, then the extremists will be marginalized and the flow of violent radicalism to the rest of the world will slow and eventually end.
And we can't have that happen. That's why we have to stay the course with the growing bitterness thing.
Afghan troops are in combat against Taliban remnants. Iraqi soldiers are sacrificing to defeat Al Qaida in their own country.
These brave citizens know the stakes: the survival of their own liberty, the future of their own region, the justice and humanity of their own tradition. And the United States of America is proud to stand beside them.
Just in case they get carried away with the whole "freedom" thing.
With the rise of a deadly enemy and the unfolding of a global ideological struggle, our time in history will be remembered for new challenges and unprecedented dangers. And yet the fight we have joined is also the current expression of an ancient struggle between those who put their faith in dictators and those who put their faith in the people.
Throughout history, tyrants and would-be tyrants have always claimed that murder is justified to serve their grand vision. And they end up alienating decent people across the globe.
And this nation is now proud to join that tradition.
Tyrants and would-be tyrants have always claimed that regimented societies are strong and pure until those societies collapse in corruption and decay.
What's a line about Tom DeLay doing in this speech? That girl is
so fired...
Tyrants and would-be tyrants have always claimed that free men and women are weak and decadent until the day that free men and women defeat them.
God, I hope that day doesn't come `til I'm out of office...