Bush: 'They dream to destroy'

In his speech Thursday, the president pushed his message on terrorism hard. He laid out differences between the Sunni Muslims of Al Qaeda and the Shiite Muslims adhering to groups like Hizbullah, noting the state sponsorship of Syria and Iran. "Still others are homegrown terrorists, fanatics who live quietly in free societies. They dream to destroy," he continued.

Despite their differences, "these groups form the outlines of a single movement: the worldwide network of radicals that use terror to kill those who stand in the way of their totalitarian ideology," the president said.

On Wednesday, Bush maintained that his series of speeches, which will culminate in an address to the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 19, are not political. But Democrats did not buy that argument, and have come out with their own rhetorical guns blazing, denying accusations that they are "appeasers" and rejecting GOP inferences that they would vote to cut off funding to the troops when Congress comes back. The Democrats' stated plan is to leave no charge unanswered, with party leaders at the ready to respond.

It's hard to reverse public opinion

Furthering the GOP's challenge, it remains an open question whether many Americans who now oppose the administration's foreign policy are listening to the arguments and are willing to change their minds. History has shown that once public opinion turns sour on a war, such as Vietnam, it is impossible to win it back.

"If he really wants to improve public support for the war, speeches alone won't do it," says Christopher Gelpi, a political scientist at Duke University who is studying this issue. "He has to improve conditions on the ground in Iraq."

Given the steepness of that task, he adds, perhaps the best Bush can hope for from his speeches - and from his surrogates' suggestions that Democrats would weaken the nation's defenses - is to keep the Republican base from getting discouraged in November and failing to vote.

"A key point in getting people to vote Republican is getting them to believe that fighting this war is the right thing to do - not so much focusing on success, but focusing on what's the reason for the mission," says Mr. Gelpi. "Shifting his rhetoric to that may help to support Republican candidates. Certainly, he wants to avoid losing control of one of the houses of Congress this fall."

Probably the most politically pungent speech of the week came from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who spoke of "moral and intellectual confusion" over the Iraq war and the larger war on terror as he criticized Bush's critics and the news media.

On Tuesday, Vice President Cheney spoke at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, where Bush came on 9/11, right after the attacks. He sounded a familiar theme: "We have only two options in Iraq - victory or defeat."

BELGRADE, Mont. - Republican Sen. Conrad Burns, whose recent comments have stirred controversy, says the United States is up against a faceless enemy of terrorists who "drive taxi cabs in the daytime and kill at night."

During a fundraiser Wednesday with first lady Laura Bush, the three-term Montana senator talked about terrorism, tax cuts and the money he has brought to his state. Burns is one of the more vulnerable Senate incumbents, facing a tough challenge from Democrat Jon Tester.

He has drawn criticism in recent weeks for calling his house painter a "nice little Guatemalan man" during a June speech. Burns, whose re- election campaign is pressing for tighter immigration controls, also suggested that the man might be an illegal immigrant. The campaign later said the worker is legal.

Burns, 71, also had to apologize after confronting members of a firefighting team at the Billings airport and telling them they had done a "piss-poor job," according to a state report. In July, the Hotshot crew had traveled 2,000 miles from Staunton, Va., to help dig fire lines for about a week around a 143-square-mile wildfire east of Billings.

At the campaign event with Bush, Burns talked about the war on terrorism, saying a "faceless enemy" of terrorists "drive taxi cabs in the daytime and kill at night."

The campaign said Thursday that the senator was simply pointing out terrorists can be anywhere.

"The point is there are terrorists that live amongst us. Not only here, but in Britain and the entire world," said spokesman Jason Klindt. "Whether they are taxi drivers or investment bankers, the fact remains that this is a new type of enemy."

Responding to Democratic complaints about Burns' verbal gaffes, Republicans argued that a Tester comment earlier this week was derogatory toward American Indians.

In an interview with The Seattle Times, Tester talked about the faith he has in his staff, and said, "Nobody has done anything to make me think they're trying to tomahawk me."

Brock Lowrance, spokesman for the Montana Republican Party, said American Indians have long found "tomahawk" a derogatory term. American Indians are the state's largest minority group.

At the fundraiser, Bush described Burns as a strong advocate for Montana farmers and families.

"In Washington, Senator Burns is a respected voice on the issues facing rural communities in Montana and across the nation," Bush said.

Muslim leaders point to two stark examples of the new mind-set:

- A Canadian-born Muslim man worked with police for months investigating a group of Islamic men and youths accused in June of plotting terrorist attacks in Ontario. Mubin Shaikh said he feared any violence would ultimately hurt Islam and Canadian Muslims.

- In England, it's been widely reported that a tip from a British Muslim helped lead investigators to uncover what they said was a plan by homegrown extremists to use liquid explosives to destroy U.S.-bound planes.

Cooperation isn't emotionally easy, as Western governments enact security policies that critics say have criminalized Islam itself.

Safiyyah Ally, a graduate student in political science at the University of Toronto, wrote recently on altmuslim.com that Shaikh, the Canadian informer, went too far.

She said the North American Muslim community "is fragile enough as is" without members "spying" on each other. Leaders should counsel Muslims against violence and report suspicious activity to police - but nothing more, she argued.

"We cannot have communities wherein individuals are paranoid of each other and turned against one another," Ally wrote.

Yet some leaders say keeping watch for extremists protects all Muslims and their civil rights.

Salam al-Marayati, executive director of Muslim Public Affairs Council, an advocacy group based in Los Angeles, says working closely with authorities underscores that Muslims are not outsiders to be feared. It also gives Muslims a way to directly air their concerns about how they're treated by the government.

"We're not on opposite teams," al-Marayati said. "We're all trying to protect our country from another terrorist attack."

In 2004, his group started the "National Anti-Terrorism Campaign," urging Muslims to monitor their own communities, speak out more boldly against violence and work with law enforcement. Hundreds of U.S. mosques have signed on, al-Marayati said.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a civil rights group, ran a TV ad campaign and a petition-drive called "Not in the Name of Islam," which repudiates terrorism. Hundreds of thousands of people have endorsed it, according to Ibrahim Hooper, the group's spokesman.

After the London subway bombings, the Fiqh Council of North America, which advises Muslims on Islamic law, issued a fatwa - or edict - declaring that nothing in Islam justifies terrorism. The council said Muslims were obligated to help law enforcement protect civilians from attacks.

"I think everyone now agrees that silence isn't an option," Hooper said. "You have to speak out in defense of civil liberties, but you also have to speak out against any kind of extremism or violence that's carried out in the name of Islam."

But many Muslims say they're being asked to look out for something that even the U.S. government struggles to define: What constitutes an imminent threat?

Khan said he has heard of cases in American mosques where imams have expressed extreme views in sermons and worshippers have confronted the prayer leaders about it.

"But beyond that what else can we do?" Khan said. "Do we need to hire a private detective to put on this guy? If five guys came to me and said, 'Muqtedar, let's get together. Let's blow up this and that,' then I would call the police. But the community does not understand surveillance."

Imam Muhammad Musri, head of the Islamic Society of Central Florida, said he has tried to address this problem in the eight mosques he oversees in the Orlando area.

He regularly invites law enforcement officials to speak with local Muslims and encourages mosque members to come to him with any suspicions, even if they overhear something said in jest. Musri says he also speaks regularly with local FBI and police to establish a relationship in case a real threat emerges.

"Here in Central Florida, talking to most people, they are literally upset by the actions of Muslims - or so-called Muslims - overseas in Europe and the Middle East, because they say, 'We wish they would come and see how we're doing here,'" Musri said. "We know who the real enemy is - someone who might come from the outside and try to infiltrate us. Everybody is on the lookout."

The winner of the contract will likely also be required to develop an Arabic version of the multinational force's web site.

Attempts by The Associated Press to contact officials connected to the project via telephone and e-mail were not successful Thursday night.

The program comes during what has appeared to be a White House effort, before the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, to take the offensive against critics at a time of doubt about the future of Iraq.

President Bush addressed the American Legion's national convention in Salt Lake City on the issue Thursday, stressing that a U.S. pullout from iraq would lead to its conquest by America's worst enemies.

He continued a theme set by both Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice when they spoke to the administration-friendly group earlier in the week.

The military last year was criticized for a public relations program in Iraq that included hiring a consulting firm that paid Iraqi news media to carry news stories written by American troops.

Pentagon officials have defended the program as a necessary tool in the war on terror. But critics have said it contradicts American values of freedom of the press.

The U.S. government's first experience with forcibly spreading democracy came in the wake of the Spanish-American War. When the U.S. government declared war on Spain in 1898, it pledged it would not annex foreign territory. But after a swift victory, the United States annexed all of the Philippines. As Tony Smith, author of America's Mission, noted,

Ultimately, the democratization of the Philippines came to be the principal reason the Americans were there; now the United States had a moral purpose to its imperialism and could rest more easily.

William McKinley proclaimed that in the Philippines the U.S. occupation would "assure the residents in every possible way [of the] full measure of individual rights and liberties which is the heritage of a free people, substituting the mild sway of justice and right for arbitrary rule." He also promised to "Christianize" the Filipinos, as if he did not consider the large number of Filipino Catholics to be Christians. McKinley was devoted to forcibly spreading American values abroad at the same time that he championed high tariffs to stop Americans from buying foreign products.

The "mild sway of justice" worked out very well for Filipino undertakers. The United States Christianized and civilized the Filipinos by authorizing American troops to kill any Filipino male 10 years old and older and by burning down and massacring entire villages. (Filipino resistance fighters also committed atrocities against American soldiers.) Hundreds of thousands of Filipinos died as the United States struggled to crush resistance to its rule in a conflict that dragged on for a decade and cost the lives of 4,000 American troops.

Despite the brutal U.S. suppression of the Filipino independence movement, President Bush, in a 2003 speech in Manila, claimed credit for the United States's having brought democracy to the Philippines:

America is proud of its part in the great story of the Filipino people. Together our soldiers liberated the Philippines from colonial rule.

Perhaps Bush believes that subservience to the U.S. government is the highest freedom that any foreign people can attain. His comments illustrated the continual "1984"-style rewriting of American history.

Latin American interventions

Woodrow Wilson raised tub-thumping for democracy to new levels. As soon as he took office, he began saber-rattling against the Mexican government, outraged that the Mexican president, Victoriano Huerta, had come to power by military force (during the Mexican civil war that broke out in 1910). Wilson announced in May 1914,

They say the Mexicans are not fitted for self-government; and to this I reply that, when properly directed, there is no people not fitted for self-government.

This is almost verbatim what Bush has said about Iraqis and other Arabs. And as long as a president praises self-government, many Americans seem oblivious when he oppresses foreigners.

Wilson summarized his Mexican policy: "I am going to teach the South American republics to elect good men!" U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain Walter Hines Page explained the U.S. government's attitude toward Latin America:

The United States will be here 200 years and it can continue to shoot men for that little space until they learn to vote and rule themselves.

In order to cut off the Mexican government's tariff revenue, Wilson sent U.S. forces to seize the city of Veracruz, one of the most important Mexican ports. U.S. soldiers killed hundreds of Mexicans (while suffering 19 dead) and briefly rallied the Mexican opposition around the Mexican leader.

In 1916, U.S. Marines seized Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic. After the United States could not find any Dominican politicians who would accept orders from Washington, it installed its own military government to run the country for eight years. The previous year, the U.S. military had seized control of Haiti and dictated terms to that nation's president. When local residents rebelled against U.S. rule in 1918, thousands of Haitians were killed. Tony Smith observes,

What makes Wilson's [Latin American] policy even more annoying is that its primary motive seems to have been to reinforce the self-righteous vanity of the president.

World War I and II

After Wilson took the nation into World War I "to make the world safe for democracy," he acted as if fanning intolerance was the key to spreading democracy. He increasingly demonized all those who did not support the war and his crusade to shape the postwar world. He denounced Irish-Americans, German-Americans, and others, declaring, "Any man who carries a hyphen about him carries a dagger which he is ready to plunge into the vitals of the Republic." Wilson urged Americans to see military might as a supreme force for goodness, appealing in May 1918 for "force, force to the utmost, force without stint or limit, the righteous and triumphant force which shall make Right the law of the world." As Harvard professor Irving Babbitt commented,

Wilson, in the pursuit of his scheme for world service, was led to make light of the constitutional checks on his authority and to reach out almost automatically for unlimited power.

Again, the parallels with Bush are almost uncanny. And many of the same intellectuals who currently praise Wilson for his abuses in the name of idealism also heap accolades on Bush's head.

The deaths of more than 100,000 Americans in World War I did nothing to bring Wilson's lofty visions to Earth. The 1919 Paris peace talks became a slaughter pen of Wilson's pretensions. One of his top aides, Henry White, later commented, "We had such high hopes of this adventure; we believed God called us and now we are doing hell's dirtiest work." Thomas Fleming, the author of The Illusion of Victory, noted, "The British and French exploited the war to forcibly expand their empires and place millions more people under their thumbs." Fleming concluded that one lesson of World War I is that "idealism is not synonymous with sainthood or virtue. It only sounds that way." But it did not take long for idealism to recover its capacity to induce political delusions.

During the 1920s and 1930s, U.S. military interventions in Latin America were routinely portrayed as "missions to establish democracy." The U.S. military sometimes served as a collection agency for American corporations or banks that had made unwise investments or loans in politically unstable foreign lands. Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler bitterly lamented of his 33 years of active service,

I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.... I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street.

Franklin Roosevelt painted World War II as a crusade for democracy — hailing Joseph Stalin as a partner in liberation. Roosevelt praised Stalin as "truly representative of the heart and soul of Russia" — as if the lack of bona fide elections in Russia was a mere technicality, since Stalin was the nation's favorite. Roosevelt praised Soviet Russia as one of the "freedom-loving Nations" and stressed that Stalin was "thoroughly conversant with the provisions of our Constitution." Harold Ickes, one of Roosevelt's top aides, proclaimed that communism was "the antithesis of Nazism" because it was based on "belief in the control of the government, including the economic system, by the people themselves." The fact that the Soviet regime had been the most oppressive government in the world in the 1930s was irrelevant, as far as Roosevelt was concerned. If Stalin's regime was "close enough" to democracy, it is difficult to understand why Roosevelt is venerated as an idealist.

Cold War interventions

Dwight Eisenhower was no slacker in invoking democracy. In 1957, he declared,

We as a nation ... have a job to do, a mission as the champion of human freedom. To conduct ourselves in all our international relations that we never compromise the fundamental principle that all peoples have a right to an independent government of their own full, free choice.

He was perfectly in tune with the Republican Party platform of 1952, which proclaimed,

We shall again make liberty into a beacon light of hope that will penetrate the dark places.... The policies we espouse will revive the contagious, liberating influences which are inherent in freedom.

But Eisenhower's idealism did not deter the CIA, dreading communist takeovers, from toppling at least two democratically elected regimes. In 1953, the CIA engineered a coup that put the shah in charge of Iran. In 1954, it aided a military coup in Guatemala that crushed that nation's first constitutionally based government.

The elected Guatemalan government and the United Fruit Company could not agree on the value of 400,000 acres that the Guatemalan government wanted to expropriate to distribute to small farmers. The Guatemalan government offered $1.2 million as compensation based on the "taxed value of the land; Washington insisted on behalf of United Fruit that the value was $15.9 million, that the company be reimbursed immediately and in full, and that [President Jacobo] Arbenz's insistence on taking the land was clear proof of his communist proclivities," as America's Mission noted.

Yet, at the same time, the federal government in the United States was confiscating huge swaths of private land throughout American inner cities for urban renewal and highway projects, often paying owners pittances for their homes. There was no foreign government to intervene to protect poor Americans from federal redevelopment schemes. The fact that the U.S. government got miffed over a 1954 Guatemalan government buyout offer helped produce decades of repressive rule and the killing of hundreds of thousands of Guatemalan civilians.

Since the Eisenhower era, U.S. government bogus efforts to spread democracy have sprouted like mushrooms. Especially with the creation of the National Endowment for Democracy in 1983, all limits were lifted on how many democratic cons that the U.S. government could bankroll abroad. The U.S. government is currently spending more than a billion dollars a year for democracy efforts abroad. But Thomas Carothers, the director of the Carnegie Endowment's Democracy and Rule of Law Project, warns that Bush policies are creating a "democracy backlash" around the globe.

The greatest gift the United States could give the world is an example that serves as a shining city on a hill. As University of Pennsylvania professor Walter McDougall observed, "The best way to promote our institutions and values abroad is to strengthen them at home." But there is scant glory for politicians in restraining their urge to "save humanity." The ignorance of the average American has provided no check on "run amok" politicians and bureaucrats.

James Bovard is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy [2006] as well as The Bush Betrayal [2004], Lost Rights [1994] and Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice and Peace to Rid the World of Evil (Palgrave-Macmillan, September 2003) and serves as a policy advisor for The Future of Freedom Foundation. Send him email.

This article originally appeared in the June 2006 edition of Freedom Daily.

On Wednesday, Andy Fisher, a spokesman for the Foreign Relations Committee, said the panel had taken no action on the January 2005 nomination while the investigation was under way "and does not intend to now."

Under the 1994 law that created the board, Tomlinson, who has denied the allegations, can remain at his post until a successor is confirmed.

Tish King, a spokesperson, had no immediate reaction to the committee's move.

Reps. Howard Berman and Tom Lantos, California Democrats, and Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., said in a statement Tuesday they were outraged by what has emerged from the investigation that they requested last year.

They said in a letter to President Bush that the results of the investigation left no doubt that Tomlinson violated public trust and Bush's own ethical standards.

"We urge you to immediately remove Mr. Tomlinson from his position and to take all necessary steps to restore the integrity of the Broadcasting Board of Governors," they wrote.

Tomlinson's term expired in 2004, but he stayed on under board rules which permit him to continue until a replacement is confirmed, Fisher said.

The White House has not indicated what it might do about the situation, Fisher told The Associated Press.

Berman and Lantos asked the chairman of the House International Relations Committee, Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., to hold hearings on Tomlinson. Dodd asked the same of Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ill., chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.

All 50 governors earlier this month signed a formal letter opposing a House provision in the National Defense Authorization Act that would let Bush federalize the Guard without governors' consent in the event of a "serious natural or manmade disaster, accident or catastrophe."

Adding to their worries, the NGA said, the Senate approved-version of the legislation would give Bush similar powers by redefining the Insurrection Act, a Civil War-era law that's rarely used.

"It's a basic reshuffling of the balance between the states and the federal government," said Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, chairwoman of the NGA. "It's ill-advised. It's a bad idea."

The letter states: "Each of these proposals represents a dramatic expansion of federal authority during natural disasters that could cause confusion in the command-and-control of the National Guard and interfere with states' ability to respond to natural disasters within their borders." It was signed by Napolitano, Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, Mike Easley of North Carolina and Mark Sanford of South Carolina.

A Rumsfeld spokeswoman, Cynthia Smith, said he would not comment publicly and would respond directly to the governors.

The four governors also sent a letter to leaders in the House and Senate, urging them to drop the proposals.

Under current law, governors are commanders of the Guard in their states, but the president must get their consent to federalize the troops domestically, except in cases of rebellion.

Governors were particularly upset that the proposals in Congress were made without any discussion with governors.

"Governors are commanders-in-chief. They need to be consulted, they need to be part of solutions," said David Quam, the NGA's director of federal relations. "They shouldn't have to catch things coming through Congress and on their way to the president's desk."

An agreement is expected later this month on the final legislation that would go to Bush.