Bush: U.S. won't relent in war on terror

[cal04]

The U.S. will take the fight against terrorism to every shore and outpost in pursuit of enemies like none before, not relenting until their defeat and showing the same resolve that won the Cold War, President Bush told West Point graduates Saturday. "America will fight the terrorists on every battlefront. And we will not rest until this threat to our country has been removed," the commander in chief said in his commencement address at the U.S. Military Academy.

"Against such an enemy 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," Bush said. Bush recounted the challenges and setbacks in the early years after World War II, when the Cold War took root. He commended President Truman for laying the groundwork of success against communism and said that what was he was doing today against a more elusive enemy, global terrorists.

"By the actions he took, the institutions he built, the alliances he forged and the doctrines he set down, President Truman laid the foundation for America's victory in the Cold War," Bush said. "Today at the start of a new century, we are again engaged in a war unlike any our nation has fought before. And like Americans in Truman's day, we are laying the foundations of victory," the president said. To the 861 men and woman in West Point's 208th graduating class, Bush warned them that "the enemies we face today are in many ways different than the enemies we faced in the Cold War. The terrorists have no borders to protect of capital to defend. They cannot be deterred but they will be defeated."

(snip)
"Difficult challenges remain in both Afghanistan and Iraq, but America is safer and the world is more secure because these two countries are now democracies and they are allies in the cause of freedom and peace." Violence has intensified recently in Afghanistan and Iraq is hanging heavily over Bush's presidency. At least 2,450 members of the U.S. military have died since Bush ordered an invasion of Iraq more than three years ago. The war is a major factor in Bush's slump in the polls to the lowest point of his presidency. There are 132,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, and election-year pressure is building to begin troop withdrawals. "We're still in the early stages of this struggle for freedom and, like the first years of the Cold War, we've seen setbacks and challenges and days that have tested America's resolve. Yet we've also seen days of victory and hope."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060527/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_west_point

[babylonsister]

1. Big fat yawn. More terra, different day. nt

[OKthatsIT]

47. War on Terror is a FRAUD...secretly boosting 3 new industrial complexes

[Triana]

48. EXACTLY! It's pure bu$hit (n/t)

[leesa]

2. Of course he won't relent. He's making too damned much money in

this bogus "terror war"

[lumpy]

18. With Bush it isn't just about money.

The man is sick. Bush is suffering from megalomania; obsessed with the idea he can gain glory and 'victory' in bringing 'freedom and democracy' to the world with "the greatest army in the history of the world". These are not the words of sanity. These words that have been said before by the glory-hungery Roman caesars and the Hitlers of the world.

[MurrayDelph]

40. As Moe Howard said

(while dressed as Hitler):

I will fight to the last drop of ... YOUR blood!

[Deja Q]

3. and most wars require money. All these tax cuts don't help.

Can't the big corporations do their part to protect freedom too? We're already dying for them as it stands.

Or falls.

[LeighAnn]

4. We'll drop bombs on people until everyone loves us

Didn't he give this exact same speech in 2001? And then several times again in 2002? Then again several times leading up to the Iraq war? And several dozen times since then? I mean, the exact same speech?

Meanwhile, haven't we blown up or shot tens if not hundreds of thousands of human beings? How many thousands and thousands of families have been terrorized by the United States government since Bush first vowed to make the world safe from "terror"?

I just don't see how blowing up babies is supposed to keep the United States safe.

[LibDemAlways]

11. Where are the intelligent leaders who understand that

"terrorism" is based on an ideology and the only power necessary to "fight" it is brainpower - identify and get at its root causes. Not to say we don't have to go after terrorists and prevent terrorist attacks. But that takes good police work. As I recall those responsible for the first World Trade Center bombing are behind bars, while Osama is roaming around a free man.

Destroying innocent lives is terrorism. Under the current cabal, we have become a terrorist state.

[lumpy]

16. , Thank you, I couldn't agree more.

I was amazed reading the content of Bush's speech; the words of a megalomaniac. He has set himself up as the savior of the world; no country is safe from his obsession to bring freedom and democracy to all, at all cost. To quote: "the greatest army in the history of the world", we will never back down, never give in until complete victory, fight terrorism on every shore and outpost, etc.
He claims to have won the battle in Iraq and Afghnistan quote :" ...these two countries are now democracies and they are now allies in the cause of freedom and peace".
The man is clearly delusional and dangerous if he is supported in his personal obsession for glory. If he is allowed to continue on his insane road to 'victory', this will be the downfall of this country.

[lumpy]

19. The truth sinks in when Bush's

speech is thoroughly read, Bush is delusional and a megalomaniac. He is about power and glory. He doesn't need money, his needs are narcisstic, the extreme desire to be acknowledged as a great leader and victor, to be worshiped as the individual who brought great change to the world.

[C_U_L8R]

5. The Hobgoblinator

strikes again....
boooooooooooooooooooooo
scary

[Rufus T. Firefly]

6. Are you sure it wasn't a recording?

I think they just use CGI to make the backdrops look different, but it's the same shit.

[Canuckistanian]

7. What does that mean?

As long as he decides what the definition of the word "terrorism" is, he can keep sending young men and women into the meat grinder of Iraq indefinitely.

And what is his definition of vitory? Will there be a ticker tape parade? A treaty signed? A new country created?

What is the meaning of "relenting"? It's obvious to most experts and analysts that staying in Iraq is only making things worse in terms of death and destruction of American troops and innocent Iraqi citizens. The only "terrorists" in Iraq now are mostly comprised of ordinary Iraqis who are enraged with the continuing occupation by a brutal foreign military force. The longer the Americans and Brits stay, the more "terrorists" join the fight.

How could pulling troops be considered a failure, in real terms?

[BenDavid]

8. I personally cannot

watch this man talk with his shifty eyes knowing he is lying. Oh, I wonder how many times he invoked 9 11 into that speech? Guess John Mason( The Rock) had it right when he told General Hummel,and this could be applied to bush, "Personally, I think you're a fucking idiot."

[lumpy]

21. He isn't lying about his ambitions.

He may lie to get what he wants, but there is no doubt that he believes he can be the one to bring freedom and democracy to this pitiful world, with the help of God, of course. He is looking for that everlasting glory. He has done nothing else to placate his ego and make his 'mark' in the world. He believes elimination of his 'enemies' is the way to go about it. A most ambitious and overwhelming task.

[IndianaGreen]

9. Endless War: "to every shore and outpost in pursuit of enemies"

He commended President Truman for laying the groundwork of success against communism and said that what was he was doing today against a more elusive enemy, global terrorists.


Let's take a cold hard look at the Truman Doctrine, shall we, for it led to years of military interventionism that culminated in Vietnam, and in US-sponsored anti-democratic coups in Guatemala, Iraq, and Iran. Here is a 1968 article about the Truman Doctrine that you won't find in the Truman Library:

The Truman Doctrine
and the Greek Civil War

excerpted from the book

Intervention and Revolution
The United States in the Third World

by Richard J. Barnet

World Publishing, 1968, paperback edition

p97
In the name of the Truman Doctrine the United States supplied the military and economic power to enable the Greek monarchy to defeat an army of communist-led insurgents in 1947-49 and won a victory which has become a model for U.S. relations toward civil wars and insurgencies. Almost twenty years later the President of the United States was defending his intervention in Vietnam by pointing to his predecessor's success in Greece. The American experience in Greece not only set the pattern for subsequent interventions in internal wars but also suggested the criteria for assessing the success or failure of counterinsurgency operations. Greece was the first major police task which the United States took on in the postwar world. One of the most important consequences of the American involvement in Greece in the 1940'S was the development of new bureaucracies specializing in military assistance, police administration, and economic aid, committed to an analysis of revolution and a set of responses for dealing with it that would be applied to many different conflicts in the next twenty years.

p101
When President Truman announced the decision to help the Greek monarchy win the civil war, he stressed that the commitment was prompted by the "terrorist activities of several thousand armed men, led by communists.'' The United States was to use its power to put down violence. But, clearly, violence itself was not the issue, for throughout 1946, according to correspondents of the London Times and other U.S. and British papers, the Greek government itself had been carrying out mass arrests, tortures, beatings, and other retaliation against those who had been on the wrong side of the earlier civil war that ended in January, 1945. The foreign minister had resigned in early 1946, charging "terrorism by state organs." In Greece, as elsewhere, the violence of constituted authorities, however oppressive their rule, was judged by one criterion and the violence of insurgents by another. President Truman alluded to the corruption and brutality of the Greek government by conceding that it was "not perfect." But while the fascist character of the government genuinely bothered some members of the U.S. government, most National-Security Managers shared the judgment of former Secretary of State James Byrnes: "We did not have to decide that the Turkish Government and the Greek Monarchy were outstanding examples of free and democratic governments."

p118
Two ... ideas which had been crucial to the development of official thinking in important parts of the national security bureaucracy were carefully excised from the Truman Doctrine message as it made the circuit of government in successive drafts. One was that the struggle in Greece was part of a global battle between economic systems. Six days before the Truman Doctrine message, the President had delivered a speech at Baylor University in Texas in which he declared that the United States was "the giant of the economic world," with the responsibility for setting "the future pattern of economic relations." Posing the fundamental split in the world between "free enterprise" and "planning," he strongly implied that the one led to peace while the other meant war. Two days before the President's scheduled appearance before Congress, C}ark Clifford came to Acheson with a revision suggested in the White House to the effect that "continued chaos in other countries and pressure exerted upon them from without would mean the end of free enterprise and democracy in those countries and that the disappearance of free enterprise in other nations would threaten our economy and our democracy." Acheson opposed the insertion of this ideological language on the grounds that it might embarrass American relations with the Socialist government of Great Britain. But a number of major advisers in the administration attached considerable importance to this point.

If Clifford's articulation of the economic conflict was too ideological for Acheson's taste, his second suggestion smacked too much of realpolitik; Clifford wanted a reference in the speech to Greece's strategic importance and to "the great natural resources of the Middle East." When British Marshal Montgomery had asked the U.S. chiefs of staff in the fall of 1946 what value they attached to Middle Eastern oil, "their immediate and unanimous answer was-vital." Forrestal was almost obsessed with the strategic importance of the area to the United States. But the State Department concluded that it would create an unfortunate impression if it appeared that the enunciation of the American Responsibility had something to do with oil. The administration anticipated enough problems in distinguishing the new American relationship to the Mediterranean from Britain's imperial role. As it was, Acheson was asked some pointed questions in the hearings about possible connections between the President's dramatic announcement of America's new "responsibility" for the Eastern Mediterranean and the authorization two days earlier of the trans-Arabian pipeline. Acheson replied that there was none. The charge made by leftist critics and a few disappointed British imperialists that the Truman Doctrine was principally a piece of petroleum diplomacy is a serious distortion. Nevertheless, there is no doubt, as Stephen Xydis observes in his exhaustive study of the relevant documents, that one motive for the United States' intervention was to stabilize the area so as to "contribute to the preservation of American oil concessions there."

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Insurgency_Revolution/Truman%20Doc_GreekCW_IAR.html

[Toucano]

10. Typo should read: U.S. won't relent in war of terror n/t

[brentspeak]

12. But first...a 30-day-long vacation

I'm sure nightly TV coverage of the President of the United States sleeping on his hammock for entire month must have been an intimidating sight for the 9/11 hijackers...

[Terran]

13. It's going to take a very brave Democrat

to stand up and say, some day, that there IS no War on Terror, that it was all just made up by the Bush cabal to stay in power. Because as soon as someone says it, the repub nut cases and neocons will howl. Maybe if we just stop mentioning it, and get down to business of dealing with terror in some sort of intelligent manner...

[G2099]

14. War on terror is a Hoax

911 was a US government operation. There is no war on terror. End of war on terror. End of Subject. Now back to reality, the economy stupid.

[subterranean]

17. I tend to agree

Eliminating the threat of terrorist tactics would require eliminating every human being on Earth. The "war on terror" is nothing but a smokescreen for the neocons to pursue their radical agenda.

[cliss]

24. Sometimes I wonder.

I certainly wouldn't put it past them. Look who benefited from that.

But I wonder about their I.Q. level. They really don't seem clever enough to pull it off.

[Nostradammit]

33. They only stole two elections, control the White House,

The Senate, the Congress, the Supreme Court, the U.S. media and the strongest military on the planet.

Yeah, they're not clever enough.

[DiscussTheTruth]

39. You put to much credit and blame on one man.

It's the faceless crowd behind the Bushit that scares me. Who are they as I would really like to know.

[mortlefaucheur]

35. Hoax and Fraud...

Bushler says it himself: "The terrorists have no borders to protect or capital to defend. They cannot be deterred but they will be defeated."WTF?
Several hundred or maybe thousand malcontents (criminals) that can be found in any/every society. A military response is completely inappropriate for dealing with anti-social citizens.
There could be a 9-11 every day, and it wouldn't kill as many people as AIDS and homelessness (two other Repug assaults on their own populace).
Return of the Fairness Doctrine and ending election fraud are the two most powerful weapons in ending the fake "War on Terra".

[cliss]

41. good post,

and great analysis. Bush's advisors have had the same problem formulating Bush's 'policy'. They knew that at its heart, it's untenable. It doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

So they did the best they could: have Bush hammer away at it, day and night, aim for the less educated of the masses, cross your fingers and hope that they buy this bogus war.

Swipe your fist in the air, look tough. Some spit flying out of your mouth is a good effect.

...and keep your fingers crossed they don't figure it out...

Welcome to the DU, by the way:smoke:

[modrepub]

15. Basically saying

the United States does not recognize any other county's sovereign borders. We will ignore you rights when it suits our purpose. Can anyone wonder why nobody trusts us?

[CJCRANE]

20. 'Complete Victory' is a phrase Hitler used.

He was still using it when trapped in his bunker as the ruins of Berlin where over-run by the Russians.

[Sugar Smack]

22. BREAKING: "War on terror STILL not proper English"

:grr: :nuke: Why are the media still finding this acceptable? Never mind.

[uppityperson]

23. Isn't there something in military oath"threats outside and within"?

wondering.

[georgiagirl]

25. Past time

It's way past time for a group of Repugs, Congressional and a few brave souls in the Administration, to think of the country first, not their party, and say Bush is incompetent to be President and this has to be stopped NOW.

[Buns_of_Fire]

30. Welcome, georgiagirl

I agree that it'll take but a few brave people in Congress and the maladministration to finally call boosh* out and end the nightmare.

The problem we face is that he'll have to be politically crippled before they feel safe enough to do so.

[georgiagirl]

31. Thanks for the welcome

I've been lurking for quite awhile and am a little nervous about posting.:hi:

[Buns_of_Fire]

32. You'll do fine. Consider it your "easing-in" period.

Everyone develops their niche over time. Some are the researchers par excellance. Some develop into rabble-rousers. And some *ahem* are destined to be the snarky smartasses who drop the Tootsie-Roll into the punchbowl and then feign ignorance. :evilgrin:

[sweetheart]

26. relentless federal power grab veiled in lies

That lying sack of shit has passed his sell-by date.

[gulliver]

27. You can't relent if you've never started.

The little feller's hidden presumption is that he is doing something to begin with. He's just making it worse. The U.S. should relent in its stubborn refusal to combat terrorism effectively.

[Vidar]

28. Bush's private war on reality continues unabated.

[acmavm]

29. Is he gonna send Jenna and Not Jenna? Until then, he's full of shit. Even

after that, he's fighting a war he cannot win. But if he doesn't make his kids make the same sacrifice he expects of others, than he's just another war monger sending the kids of less fortunates to their deaths.

[Buns_of_Fire]

34. It serves him well to have such a nebulous opponent.

Whip up the masses into a frenzy about something that cannot, by definition, be defeated. Are YOU a terrorist? Are YOU?

I weep for the nation of wimps our country has become.

[Erika]

36. Yes, construction noises can shut down the WH now

Yes, many have become wimps. What happened to live free or die?

[ninkasi]

37. He is clearly insane

We have to face the fact that the man is delusional. He claims that "America is safer and the rest of the world is more secure" because Afghanistan and Iraq are now democracies. His speeches are so obviously contradicted by reality that I wonder if he really believes the garbage he spews.

Even the most devoted freeper should be able to see that their hero is becoming more and more irrational. The ones who continue to support him are as crazy as he is. Bush is the very worst president ever. He continues to use phrases like freedom, and democracy while curtailing more and more of our liberties. He should be removed from office due to gross incompetence and insanity.

[NI4NI]

38. Prior to September 11th, he just plain ignored it

He relented on it the very day he turned his attention from Afghanistan back towards his pre-planned invasion of Iraq. How about this bit of bull dogged relentlessness from our determined leader concerning Osama Bin Laden:

"I don't know where he is. Nor...you know...I just don't spend that much time on him really, to be honest with you. I...I truly am not concerned about him".....(A direct quote that he tried to deny 2 years later).

[devinsgram]

42. What a stupid, stupid man.

He does not even realize that terroism will only end when mankind comes to an end.

[drduffy]

43. Will someone please shut

him up. I am not advocating ill. Simply that somebody please duct-tape his mouth shut.

[daleo]

44. Endless war

Bush's usual blather.

[dmoded]

45. best way to fight terrorism..

do not give other countries a reason to hate you.. i don't think labelling nations "evil" is a first step, then occupation.

and in his own words:

Difficult challenges remain in both Afghanistan and Iraq, but America is safer and the world is more secure because these two countries are now democracies and they are allies in the cause of freedom and peace."

So blatant invasions of counties with totally different ideoligies make us safer now? are the US flags raised in iraq and afghanistan a milestone when it was done by force?

how about withdrawl, let things be the way they were before 'dubya'. I rememeber the clinton years being so smooth for the world, no wars, no daily casualty reports, no daily redundant speeches about "well we f*cked up big time, but we're going to see this through"

the quagmire never ends.

"bring 'em on".....

-dm

[daleo]

46. I couldn't agree more

the quagmire never ends.

[FreeStateDemocrat]

49. Bush continues war of terror against U. S. working class.