Do you believe the chattering classes or your ears?

"Bush continues to be the most underestimated American statesman since Ronald Reagan," writes Captain Ed, cutting through the rhetorical quagmire of post-inauguration-speech chatter to present the meatiest must-read analysis we've seen. Noting that Ukranian President Viktor Yushchenko in his own inauguration speech yesterday had said "his presidency would not exist had it not been for countries like the United States dumping realpolitik to stand fast for democracy," the Captain writes:

Some people now claim that Bush didn't mean what he said -- that the speech was little more than pretty words on a cold day in January. I submit that not only did he mean to fulfill those words in the future, he already had changed the course of American policy to match his soaring rhetoric.

If Bush operated under the old "stability" doctrine, his choice should have been to support Putin and Yanukovych. It would have been easy enough to downplay the reports of widespread corruption -- just look to see how easy it was in the Palestinian Authority elections earlier this month. He could have shored up his relationship with Putin and assured a strong hand in the Caucasus against Islamofascists gathered there.

Instead, Bush chose to support democracy, and made sure that he diplomatically made clear that the American government would only accept a clean election in Ukraine. Bush gave us an advance look at what he meant in his inauguration speech when he told the world, "When you stand for liberty, we will stand with you."

That's exactly the message we got from GW's speech. We listened with our own ears and blogged about it here before the chattering classes started to pollute the air of political discourse with their noxious fumes. Charles Krauthammer's prophetic American Enterprise Institute speech last February -- blogged here -- comes to mind:

Call it democratic realism. And this is its axiom: We will support democracy everywhere, but we will commit blood and treasure only in places where there is a strategic necessity -- meaning, places central to the larger war against the existential enemy, the enemy that poses a global mortal threat to freedom.

Read that and former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky's The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny & Terror to get a bead on GW's grand vision.

Comments

[goomp]

As a member of the ancient so-called "greatest generation" of Brokaw, I am amazed at the ignorance of history and of human behavior of the supposedly educated of his generation. We can be thankful for a leader of Bush's understanding and only hope the American people undestand and forego the influence of the so called intellectuals of the Brokow generation.

[wah]

Hrrmmm...

" And this is its axiom: We will support democracy everywhere, but we will commit blood and treasure only in places where there is a strategic necessity -- meaning, places central to the larger war against the existential enemy, the enemy that poses a global mortal threat to freedom."

So we'll pay lip service where it doesn't benefit us, and send in the troops when we have some strategic reserves to gain control of?

Yup, that sounds exactly like the Project for the New American Century. It's precisely the reason we invaded Iraq and left Sudan to fester.

Hey, did ya'll notice how Soros' actions in Eastern Europe have helped create two revolutions of democracy?

Krauthammer did, and then claimed credit for 'em. And he even brought back that great word.

"The great democratic crusade undertaken by this administration is going far better than most observers will admit."