Security and Sovereignty No. 2: Setting the Ground Rules

The purpose of this posting is to lay out the background basics and ground rules for subsequent discussions of our national security and our sovereignty. First, I present a summary of my beliefs and opinions about the one person most responsible for our security and sovereignty; President Bush. In so doing I hope to also lay out the rules for a rational discussion I believe we need to effectively examine our national security and sovereignty.

In his 2002 State of the Union Speech, President Bush began with:
“We last met in an hour of shock and suffering. In four short months, our nation has comforted the victims, begun to rebuild New York and the Pentagon, rallied a great coalition, captured, arrested, and rid the world of thousands of terrorists, destroyed Afghanistan's terrorist training camps, saved a people from starvation, and freed a country from brutal oppression.
The American flag flies again over our embassy in Kabul. Terrorists who once occupied Afghanistan now occupy cells at Guantanamo Bay. And terrorist leaders who urged followers to sacrifice their lives are running for their own.”
And he ended the speech with:
“In a single instant, we realized that this will be a decisive decade in the history of liberty, that we've been called to a unique role in human events. Rarely has the world faced a choice more clear or consequential.
Our enemies send other people's children on missions of suicide and murder. They embrace tyranny and death as a cause and a creed. We stand for a different choice, made long ago, on the day of our founding. We affirm it again today. We choose freedom and the dignity of every life.
Steadfast in our purpose, we now press on. We have known freedom's price. We have shown freedom's power. And in this great conflict, my fellow Americans, we will see freedom's victory.
Thank you all. May God bless.”

America was fortunate to have a hero, a president who understood the threat and had clarity of purpose and resolve. He was acting in accord with his oath of office, his conservative beliefs, and his faith. Nothing can take his heroism away. I support President Bush in the War on Terror, in his courage to lower taxes and grow the economy in spite of the trillion dollar cost of 9/11, and in his appointment of conservative judges.

This is not to say that President Bush has not made mistakes and at times drifted left more in accord with political correctness than heroism. His collaboration with Ted Kennedy, former President Clinton, President Vicente Fox and others on the radical left have cost him way more than he could ever hope to gain. A marked characteristic of political correctness is the tactic of attacking your opponent rather than his arguments. Unfortunately President Bush, the White House, and his supporters have done this all too often. The patriotic Minutemen are not vigilantes. There are honest conservatives who have legitimate concerns about the Dubai ports deal; they are not “Islamophobes”. There are compassionate people of faith who are deeply concerned about the poor and unfortunate but who still see the rule of law as necessary to preserve justice for rich and poor alike. Loving America first and foremost does not make you an isolationist nor a racist. When I criticize President Bush’s actions and policies I am not attacking him. You already know I think he is a hero. I am not disloyal to our President, nor am in league with the radical left who seek to destroy him.

With this background, the third posting on this topic will be about the President’s Constitutional duties to our national security and sovereignty. I will try to assess how he is meeting them in several areas.