Let me say upfront that while I agree with President Bush (search) that we in the United States are in fact threatened when people elsewhere in the world do not live in freedom and cannot exercise democratic rights, I am like a lot of people who think that maybe — just maybe — saving the world from itself is a job that might be a little too big.
OK, fine — Bush has bit off quite enough to chew on for the moment and perhaps he employed the soaring rhetoric of saving the world from tyrants as a warning to tyrants. Do you really want to test me, he might have been asking.
But to hear the carping about the speech from overseas, you would have thought he declared war on the world. You could just hear the war-weary of Western Europe sighing, "Here he goes again," or a simple muttered, "Uh-oh."
By the way, they are war-weary from hearing about it, not actually doing any of it, unless you count the rhetorical war they have been waging on Bush for years now. And, if anybody was surprised about this you have to ask where have they been the last four years, sleeping?
It is already the policy of the United States that there is no safe haven for terrorists. It's called the Bush doctrine. If you're going to worry about Bush going to war on somebody, look to the countries that are harboring terrorists.
And then there is the national security policy in which the United States has promised the world that no one — friend, or foe — will be allowed to gain a military advantage or superiority over the United States. That's been in place a few years and now the Euros — including the Brits, by the way — are about to drop the arms embargo on China, mainly just to annoy the United States.
So, Western Europe is going to arm up China for a confrontation with whom, exactly? Answer: Us.
If they're going to be worried about Bush, skip the inauguration speech and look at what he's already promised years back.
That's My Word.
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