Salt Lake City – Casting the war in Iraq as a life-or-death struggle for the entire civilized world, President Bush said Thursday that a quick withdrawal would trigger more terrorist attacks in America.
“If we give up the fight in the streets of Baghdad, we will face the terrorists in the streets of our own cities,” he told military veterans at an American Legion convention.
“The security of the civilized world depends on victory in the war on terror, and that depends on victory in Iraq,” he said.
In the first in a series of congressional election-year speeches defending his Iraq policy, Bush said the stakes were too high to consider any option but total victory. While he acknowledged that many of his critics are patriotic, he suggested that they’re hopelessly naive.
The president launched his latest effort to shore up support for the war as Republicans battle to retain control of Congress in the November elections.
Voter discontent with the war has emerged as a key issue in campaigns across the country.
Polls show that most Americans don’t think the Iraq war is worth the loss of American life and don’t like the way Bush has handled it.
The president and his advisers have responded by focusing on the stakes, a debate that sidesteps questions about the conduct of the war and the more fundamental issues of whether invading Iraq was a mistake and whether the administration’s case for doing so was sound.
Bush’s remarks to the American Legion came two days after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told the same audience that war critics seemed to be more interested in “dividing our country than acting with unity” against terrorists.
Rumsfeld said that the critics suffered from “moral confusion” about the stakes in Iraq.
The president avoided disparaging his critics directly, but he made it clear that he considers criticism of his policies dangerous to America’s security.
“There are some in our country who insist that the best option in Iraq is to pull out, regardless of the situation on the ground,” he said. “If America were to pull out before Iraq can defend itself, the consequences would be absolutely predictable – and absolutely disastrous.”
The military veterans gave the president a standing ovation, but some audience members were uncomfortable with the implication that the war should be beyond criticism.
While introducing Bush, Thomas Bock, the American Legion’s national commander, equated criticism of the war with criticism of the troops.
He said “support for the war and support for the warrior” were inseparable.
