WEST POINT, N.Y. – President Bush, likening the war against Islamic radicals to the Cold War threat of communism, told U.S. Military Academy graduates yesterday that America's safety depends on an aggressive push for democracy, especially in the Middle East.
The president took a subtle jab at Syria and the nuclear ambitions of Iran. He also chided previous U.S. administrations, saying decades of excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make the United States safer.
“This is only the beginning,” Bush said. “The message has spread from Damascus to Tehran that the future belongs to freedom, and we will not rest until the promise of liberty reaches every people in every nation.”
Bush delivered his 35-minute foreign-policy address to 861 cadets, all clad in crisp white slacks and gray jackets.
“The war began on my watch, but it's going to end on your watch,” he told the cadets. “By standing with democratic reforms across a troubled region, we will extend freedom to millions who have not known it and lay the foundation for peace for generations to come.”
Bush compared his moment in presidential history to that of President Truman.
“As President Truman put it towards the end of his presidency, 'When history says that my term of office saw the beginning of the Cold War, it will also say that in those eight years we set the course that can win it.' His leadership paved the way for subsequent presidents from both political parties – men like Eisenhower, Kennedy and Reagan – to confront and eventually defeat the Soviet threat,” he 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 for victory.”
Truman told the class of 1952 at West Point that the quest for global peace depended on active and vigorous work to bring about freedom and justice across the world.
“That same principle continues to guide us in today's war on terror,” Bush told the class of 2006, the first to enter the academy after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The greatest danger the nation faces is the threat from terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction, Bush said.
“If our enemies succeed in acquiring such weapons, they will not hesitate to use them, which means they would pose a threat to America as great as the Soviet Union,” he said.
While Bush addressed the graduates, about 250 protesters marched with mock coffins outside the academy's grounds.
