President Bush offers a sweeping and optimistic defense of his Middle East policy in a new speech today, calling the region "a freer, more hopeful and more promising place than it was in 2001," Washingtonpost reported
Addressing an area of the world that has dominated and bedeviled much of his presidency, Bush argues that unseating Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was justified despite numerous missteps and portrays Iraq as "a powerful example of a moderate, prosperous, free nation."
Bush also sees "important progress" in the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process and reiterates that the United States cannot allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons.
"I believe that the day will come when the map of the Middle East shows a peaceful, secure Israel beside a peaceful and democratic Palestine," Bush says, according to prepared remarks. "The day will come when people from Cairo and Riyadh to Baghdad and Beirut to Damascus and Tehran live in free and independent societies, bound together by ties of diplomacy, tourism, and trade. And the day will come when al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas are marginalized and then wither away, as Muslims across the region realize the emptiness of the terrorists' vision and the injustice of their cause."
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The speech, released this morning by the White House, will be delivered later today at the Saban Forum at the Newseum in Washington. The remarks come about six weeks before Bush is due to leave office under a cloud of unpopularity and economic crisis, and are part of a concerted attempt by the president and his aides to highlight what they consider the positive accomplishments of his time in office.
The text represents a compendium of Bush's familiar themes and arguments on the Middle East, including his assertion that the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks fundamentally changed U.S. calculations about the use of military force. While acknowledging that Iraq's leader "was not connected to the 9/11 attacks," for example, Bush argues that removing Hussein from power "cannot be viewed in isolation from 9/11."
"In a world where terrorists armed with box cutters had just killed nearly 3,000 people, America had to decide whether we could tolerate a sworn enemy that acted belligerently, that supported terror, and that intelligence agencies around the world believed had weapons of mass destruction," Bush says in the speech. "It was clear to me, to members of both political parties, and to many leaders around the world that after 9/11, this was a risk we could not afford to take."
Bush admits to few mistakes or errors of judgment in his remarks, and uses modest language to describe even serious setbacks in U.S. Middle East policy.
"As with any large undertaking, these efforts have not always gone according to plan, and in some areas we have fallen short of our hopes," Bush says. "For example, the fight in Iraq has been longer and more costly than expected. The reluctance of entrenched regimes to open their political systems has been disappointing."
Bush also notes "unfortunate setbacks at key points" in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, including the election victory of Hamas and the takeover of Gaza. "While the Israelis and Palestinians have not yet produced an agreement, they have made important progress," he says in the speech, referring to a "new foundation of trust for the future."