John Robb on Bush v. Reagan Speeches

Ed Cone questions whether Bush’s “build democracies” speech will be remembered in the same light as Reagan’s “tear down this wall” speech. First, I think a better comparison is with Reagan’s “evil empire” speech, as Bush mentioned himself. Both are calls to action. However, the similarities end there.

Reagan proposed active and relatively bloodless (at least for us) engagement against a totalitarian empire that was poised at the edge of collapse. Reagan only helped accelerate the inevitable in his years as president by growing the economies of the world in peace. The active confrontations with the dying Soviet Empire was limited to a spending war in defense and support for groups that opposed Soviet military encroachment (Afghanistan). In contrast, while Bush’s call to action does identify the appropriate trend to support, his strategy for doing so is fatally flawed. The invasion of Iraq threw a bomb into the process of democratization in the ME and elsewhere. It created an unstable soil for the growth of democracy.

The contrast in vision is most evident in Reagan’s reference to Winston Churchill:

Sir Winston Churchill refused to accept the inevitability of war or even that it was imminent. He said, “I do not believe that Soviet Russia desires war. What they desire is the fruits of war and the indefinite expansion of their power and doctrines. But what we have to consider here today while time remains is the permanent prevention of war and the establishment of conditions of freedom and democracy as rapidly as possible in all countries.”Well, this is precisely our mission today: to preserve freedom as well as peace. It may not be easy to see; but I believe we live now at a turning point.