President Bush Makes His Case

Yesterday at the American Legion convention in Salt Lake City President Bush began a series of speeches to bolster support for the war on terror.

Earlier in the week Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld created controversy by delivering a “bad cop” speech accusing the president’s critics of “moral confusion.” But a day later Mr. Bush got to make “good cop” in which he laid out his case in positive terms without descending to blaming his critics.

In The New York Times Anne E. Kornblut and Sheryl Gay Stolberg made it clear that Bush’s attempt to link all fronts in the war on terror together was wrong.

In making the case that the war in Iraq is “the central front in our fight against terrorism,” the president linked Iraq, the summer battles between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon and the growing nuclear threat in Iran under the general rubric of his freedom agenda.



At the same time, he placed various factions of terrorists — Sunnis who swear allegiance to Al Qaeda, Shiite radicals who join groups like Hezbollah and so-called homegrown terrorists — under one umbrella.



Experts said that might be overstating the facts.



“‘Network of radicals’ suggests they are actually connected in some practical fashion, and that’s obviously not the case,” said Steven Simon, a State Department official in the administrations of President Bill Clinton and Mr. Bush’s father.

Well, maybe. But there is no doubt that we are engaged in a war against all of these forces, all of whom regard the United States as the Great Satan and all of whom are actively using military force against the United States.

And that is a truth that hardly needs overstating.

It is true that President Bush is trying to gin up support for his policies right before an election. But since the ongoing war requires the continuing support of the American people, he is bound to work to secure our approval at election time. It is by elections, after all, that we the people set the broad outlines of the policy of the government of the United States.