Andrew Sullivan says The Telegraph in London "gets it" about President Bush. He's right. Read the whole thing.
George W Bush's Whitehall address yesterday represented the boldest challenge to the conventional wisdom of the British and European elites since Woodrow Wilson preached the rights of self-determination of smaller nations after the First World War.Posted by Alan at November 21, 2003 12:24 AMHe believes that terrorism and rogue states can be vanquished on the West's terms: unlike the exhausted European empires of the post-war era, which lost almost every insurgency that they fought, America is fighting this battle at the height of its powers. Above all, it is doing so convinced of the rightness of its cause, namely the spread of liberty from which no one should be excluded.
He believes that the misery of many millions in the vast Muslim world cannot mainly be ascribed to the wrongdoings of Israel, but rather to the rottenness of their own rulers. That includes the Palestinian people, whom EU politicians have ill-served by indulging Yasser Arafat's corruption. And, in a fascinating mea culpa for years of Western policy to the region, he made clear that it was no longer enough to turn a blind eye to the depredations of tyrannical "allies" for the sake of stability. Such an approach turned out not only to be morally wrong, but also failed to bring geopolitical equilibrium, as evidenced by September 11.