President calls war on terror ‘struggle of the 21st century’
SALT LAKE CITY – President Bush began a new effort Thursday to shore up flagging support for the war in Iraq, telling a veterans group that the fight against terrorism was no mere military conflict but “the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century.”
The president responded to those – including some Republican allies in Congress – who have questioned whether the sectarian violence in Iraq has grown into civil war, casting doubts on the U.S. role there. “Our commanders and our diplomats on the ground in Iraq believe that it’s not the case,” Bush said. “They report that only a small number of Iraqis are engaged in sectarian violence, while the overwhelming majority want peace and a normal life in a unified country.”
Addressing the national convention of the American Legion, the president cast the fight as a successor to the grand campaigns of the 20th century, against fascism, Nazism and communism.
Repeating a past theme, he said that if the United States left Iraq before insurgents were defeated and the country was secure in its new democracy, the battle against terrorism would eventually be fought on U.S. streets.
The speech was the first in a series the president is planning to deliver in coming weeks, leading up to a Sept. 19 address to the annual meeting of the U.N. General Assembly in New York.
Public opinion polls show that U.S. support for the war continues to founder, potentially undermining what was a key element of the Republican Party’s strength in the 2002 and 2004 elections.
A New York Times/CBS News poll made public last week found that Americans, more than before, do not see the war in Iraq and the war against terrorism as one battle, despite Bush’s efforts to link the two. It found that 51 percent of those questioned saw no link between the two – 10 percentage points more than in June.
Democrats on Thursday answered Bush’s speech by saying his policy in Iraq had failed.
“At a time that calls for serious leadership, the president is offering yet another public-relations campaign,” said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., in a written statement. “His dire warnings of the cost of failure in Iraq do nothing to make success more likely, and his stubborn insistence on staying with a failed policy all but ensures continued violence and chaos.”
In his speech, Bush linked the fighters in Iraq to the terrorists who struck on Sept. 11, 2001, those arrested in the London plot and Hezbollah forces that attacked Israel, and he said each would “impose a dark vision of tyranny and terror across the world.”
They are, he said, “successors to fascists, to Nazis, to communists, and other totalitarians of the 20th century.” If the United States left Iraq before its government could defend itself, he told the veterans in a 44-minute address interrupted repeatedly by applause, the consequences would be “absolutely disastrous.”