May
2, 2003, 8:45 a.m. The
Lincoln Speech
What
a leader!
ow! Great scene,
great speech, who could ask for anything more? He has it exactly right.
We won a battle, we made military history, and we've changed the nature
of warfare (the guilty are at greater risk than the innocent), the better
to fulfill our national mission of spreading freedom. The tide has turned
in the war against the terror masters, but there are many battles ahead.
And the war remains what he said it was from the beginning: a war for
freedom against tyranny.
It was time for this
speech, because the contemporary attention span is so short. The world
has largely forgotten September 11, and many of the chatterers have forgotten
what this war is about, and it was good that he reminded them all. It
was also good that he drew the lessons from the battle of Iraq so that
the tyrants in Damascus, Tehran, Tripoli, Pyongyang, and Riyadh could
understand them clearly. Now they know, if any of them doubted, that they
are all on the list. And I particularly enjoyed his appeal to the Arab
street — for that is what it was — when he said that anyone
who fought for freedom would have a friend in America.
George W. is the
most amazing president. How could anyone have imagined that such a man,
who lacks all the credentials to conduct foreign policy (he hasn't traveled,
he hasn't studied foreign cultures, he doesn't speak foreign languages,
his knowledge of world history is skimpy, and he hasn't memorized the
last decade of the New York Times) would turn out to have the best
foreign-policy instincts imaginable? He reminds me more and more of Harry
Truman and Ronald Reagan. He has the most important quality of a great
leader: He instinctively finds the words to express what the American
people believe. And his are simple words, not fancy ones.
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ow! Great scene,
great speech, who could ask for anything more? He has it exactly right.
We won a battle, we made military history, and we've changed the nature
of warfare (the guilty are at greater risk than the innocent), the better
to fulfill our national mission of spreading freedom. The tide has turned
in the war against the terror masters, but there are many battles ahead.
And the war remains what he said it was from the beginning: a war for
freedom against tyranny.
