Kicking Over My Traces

President Bush delivered the commencement address today to West Point’s graduating cadets.

My favorite bits:

The field of battle is where your degree and commission will take you. This is the first class to arrive at West Point after the attacks of September the 11th, 2001. Each of you came here in a time of war, knowing all the risks and dangers that come with wearing our nation’s uniform. And I want to thank you for your patriotism, your devotion to duty, your courageous decision to serve. America is grateful and proud of the men and women of West Point.

Dang right: thank you! These newly-commissioned officers signed up not for the chance to travel the world on Uncle Sam’s tab, but to defend us stay-at-homes — “thank you” can’t be repeated too often.

West Point has adapted to prepare you for the war you’re about to enter. Since the attacks of September the 11th, 2001, this Academy has established a new Combating Terrorism Center, a new minor in Terrorism Studies, with new courses in counter-insurgency operations, intelligence, and homeland security, and winning the peace. West Point has expanded Arabic language training, has hired new faculty with expertise in Islamic law and culture, brought in members of the 101st and 82nd Airborne to train you and share their experiences on the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan. And each of you endured grueling Saturday training events where you practiced identifying IEDs, conducting convoy operations and running checkpoints. By changing to meet the new threats, West Point has given you the skills you will need in Afghanistan and Iraq — and for the long war with Islamic radicalism that will be the focus of much of your military careers.

[Emphasis mine.] Hot dog, and good on them! I sincerely hope somebody is studying Islamic military history and tradition, and their implications in regards to that letter from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

President Truman positioned U.S. forces to deal with new threats. Despite enormous pressure to bring our troops home after World War II, he kept American forces in Germany to deter Soviet aggression, and kept U.S. forces in Japan as a counterweight to communist China. Together with the deployment of U.S. forces to Korea, the military footprint Truman established on two continents has remained virtually unchanged to this day, and has served as the foundation for security in Europe and in the Pacific.

Time to re-examine troop deployment based on the Cold War. But GWB knows that — and talks about it later in the speech. (Hmmm: moving from a Napoleonic division structure to modular brigade combat teams.)

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. The enemies we face today are different in many ways from the enemy we faced in the Cold War. In the Cold War, we deterred Soviet aggression through a policy of mutually assured destruction. Unlike the Soviet Union, the terrorist enemies we face today hide in caves and shadows — and emerge to attack free nations from within. The terrorists have no borders to protect, or capital to defend. They cannot be deterred — but they will be defeated. America will fight the terrorists on every battlefront, and we will not rest until this threat to our country has been removed.

It’s vital that the general population understand the long-war concept, the difficulties that lay ahead, but also that we must keep at it until victory is achieved. No slacking!

While there are real differences between today’s war and the Cold War, there are also many important similarities. Like the Cold War, we are fighting the followers of a murderous ideology that despises freedom, crushes all dissent, has territorial ambitions, and pursues totalitarian aims. Like the Cold War, our enemies are dismissive of free peoples, claiming that men and women who live in liberty are weak and lack the resolve to defend our way of life. Like the Cold War, our enemies believe that the innocent can be murdered to serve a political vision. And like the Cold War, they’re seeking weapons of mass murder that would allow them to deliver catastrophic destruction to our country. 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.

GWB understands. Does the CIA? Does the State Department civil bureaucracy? Does Congress?

In this new war, we have set a clear doctrine. After the attacks of September the 11th, I told a joint session of Congress: America makes no distinction between the terrorists and the countries that harbor them. If you harbor a terrorist, you are just as guilty as the terrorists and you’re an enemy of the United States of America. In the months that followed, I also made clear the principles that will guide us in this new war: America will not wait to be attacked again. We will confront threats before they fully materialize. We will stay on the offense against the terrorists, fighting them abroad so we do not have to face them here at home.

Good! A forthright refutation of the oft-repeated canard of Iraq not being an imminent danger to the United States because no WMD were found.

On a personal note: I cannot imagine how RoseEllen Dowdell keeps from screaming into her pillow at night. (She and her family are described in the speech.) Her husband, a New York firefighter, was killed at the World Trade Center. One son recently graduated to follow in his father’s footsteps as an NYC firefighter. The other son is a member of West Point’s graduating class of 2006. If I were she, I would be crazy with grief and pride, love and fear.

I will add the Dowdells to my prayer intentions. May God keep all of them safe, and grant Mrs. Dowdell the grace she needs to wake up each morning, live each day, and go to sleep each night. God bless them, every one.

UPDATE: Austin Bay live-blogged the speech.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 27th, 2006 at 8:09 pm +0000 GMT and is filed under Current Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.