THE quality I most admire about President Bush is that he isn’t afraid to lead. Buoyed by election triumphs – first at home, then in Iraq – he made his State of the Union Address a trumpet call for freedom and democracy.
Above all, our president did one thing that I’ve longed for him to do: He called on the Saudi royal family to give their country’s citizens a voice in their own future.
It was an enormous step, discarding decades of diplomatic practice. Our government long ignored Saudi complicity in turning Islam into a creed of irresponsibility and venom. The Saudis spread money on both sides of the aisle in Washington, buying silence. The Bush family itself has long and friendly ties to the House of Saud.
But Wednesday night our president put the Saudis on notice: Freedom’s not for sale. Not even for oil.
His words were carefully chosen. But the Saudis must have been stunned.
For all of our concerns about an Iran with nuclear weapons, the Saudi threat cuts deeper. From the Black Sea to the Indian Ocean’s extremities, I’ve seen how Saudi wealth funds the spread of intolerance. Thousands of Saudi-sponsored mullahs blame the United States and Israel for the Islamic world’s home-grown ills. Saudi money and bigotry created the terrorist movements we face today. And the Saudis are still funding hatred.
When the monstrous House of Saud collapses – as it is bound to do – we may not like the immediate results. But the longer the reckoning is delayed, the worse the blowback will be. Better to side with the people now and take our short-term lumps. We have dues to pay for supporting those hypocritical princes at the expense of our noblest principles.
Likewise, Bush called on Pharaoh Mubarak to allow democracy on the Nile. For far too long, the United States has rationalized and subsidized authoritarian rule in Egypt – while Cairo encouraged the people to blame us for their every misery. We cannot permit the current pharaoh to inflict his son upon his captive state.
Let the Egyptian people vote in free elections, as courageous Iraqis have done. Give them real choices, not a dynasty. As with Saudi Arabia, we may not like the early results, but the current state of affairs is unsustainable – and appallingly unjust.
Syria got a well-deserved warning, too. The only disappointment on that count was that Bush failed to call for an immediate withdrawal of all Syrian troops from Lebanon – a country Damascus treats as a colony and uses as a safe retreat for terrorists.
As for the people of Iran – who yearn to be free of the mullahs who oppress them – our president stated, “As you stand for your own liberty, America stands with you.”
That tone was exactly right. When encouraging the disaffected majority in Iran to rid themselves of their withering regime, it’s critical not to threaten the country in a way that unites the population against us. Iran’s majority Persians are proud and highly nationalistic. We must avoid appearing to inflict an American vision on their country again. Instead, we need to encourage young Iranians to seize control of their own future.
Regarding Iraq, the president ignored pro-insurgency calls for a troop-withdrawal timetable and made it clear that we’re going to stay the course. Our troops will come home when freedom’s secure, but we won’t be stampeded into accepting phony time-lines that only aid our enemies.
On Iraq’s elections, our president let Iraqis speak for themselves: “Thank you to the American people who paid the cost . . . but most of all to the soldiers.” And “Tell America not to abandon us.”
We won’t abandon Iraq. And we’re no longer going to abandon America’s principles. Last Sunday, Iraq’s voters profoundly altered the strategic equation in the Middle East. We’re not going to let anyone undo that progress – neither Abu Musab al Zarqawi nor Senator Ted Kennedy.
The world hasn’t yet digested the epoch-making election in Iraq. Confusion reigns in Paris, Cairo and the Democratic National Committee. We’ll hear no end of petty complaints about Election Day imperfections or the choices Iraqis made when they marked their ballots. America-haters still want Iraq to fail.
But Iraq has already succeeded, no matter the tribulations that lie ahead. The Iraqi elections made every sacrifice worth it. The Middle East will never be the same.
The only serious disappointment Wednesday night was our president’s failure to mention a single country south of the Tropic of Cancer. After making a huge step in the right direction when he asked Congress for $15 billion to fight AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean, this time around Bush completely ignored South America, Africa, India, Indonesia and the majority of the world’s population.
No speech can cover every issue, but imagine how it strikes the billions of people yearning for better lives from Rio to Jakarta when they don’t rate a single sentence in our president’s address to our nation – and to the world.
Our problems are in the Middle East, in “Old Europe” and East Asia. But the 21st-century’s greatest potential lies in the southern reaches of the globe. We must avoid becoming so mesmerized by the Middle East that we miss the opportunities awaiting us elsewhere.
Our president raised the lamp of freedom higher than he ever has before. But its light has to fall beyond the Middle East.
Ralph Peters is the author of “Beyond Baghdad: Postmodern War and Peace.”