A Small Taste of Liberty

 
Don Surber has the must-read post of the day (hat tip: Larwyn).

President Bush addressed the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention today in Kansas City. The enemy who attacked us despises freedom, and harbors resentment at the slights he believes America and Western nations have inflicted on his people. He fights to establish his rule over an entire region. And over time, he turns to a strategy of suicide attacks destined to create so much carnage that the American people will tire of the violence and give up the fight. If this story sounds familiar, it is — except for one thing. The enemy I have just described is not al Qaeda, and the attack is not 9/11, and the empire is not the radical caliphate envisioned by Osama bin Laden. Instead, what I’ve described is the war machine of Imperial Japan in the 1940s, its surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, and its attempt to impose its empire throughout East Asia. Ultimately, the United States prevailed in World War II, and we have fought two more land wars in Asia. And many in this hall were veterans of those campaigns. Yet even the most optimistic among you probably would not have foreseen that the Japanese would transform themselves into one of America’s strongest and most steadfast allies, or that the South Koreans would recover from enemy invasion to raise up one of the world’s most powerful economies, or that Asia would pull itself out of poverty and hopelessness as it embraced markets and freedom. The lesson from Asia’s development is that the heart’s desire for liberty will not be denied. Once people even get a small taste of liberty, they’re not going to rest until they’re free. Today’s dynamic and hopeful Asia — a region that brings us countless benefits — would not have been possible without America’s presence and perseverance. It would not have been possible without the veterans in this hall today. And I thank you for your service. Ouch. That has to hurt his critics. At least the ones who have a conscience. While the antiwar crowd — our intellectual and moral superiors — focused on his later parallels of Iraq and Vietnam, I found the comparison to Japan and Korea to be more appropriate. At the outset of World War II there were only two democracies in the Far East — Australia and New Zealand. Today most of the nations in Asia are free, and its democracies reflect the diversity of the region. Some of these nations have constitutional monarchies, some have parliaments, and some have presidents. Some are Christian, some are Muslim, some are Hindu, and some are Buddhist. Yet for all the differences, the free nations of Asia all share one thing in common: Their governments derive their authority from the consent of the governed, and they desire to live in peace with their neighbors. Along the way to this freer and more hopeful Asia, there were a lot of doubters. Many times in the decades that followed World War II, American policy in Asia was dismissed as hopeless and naive. And when we listen to criticism of the difficult work our generation is undertaking in the Middle East today, we can hear the echoes of the same arguments made about the Far East years ago. In the aftermath of Japan’s surrender, many thought it naive to help the Japanese transform themselves into a democracy. Then as now, the critics argued that some people were simply not fit for freedom... It took, what, 10 years to get the Japanese to get on their feet? As a boy in the 1950s, I recall that “made in Japan” meant junk...

The accompanying screen-cap depicts ABC's coverage of the speech (courtesy of Ace). Not that they have an agenda or anything.