Bush receives International Medal of Peace; friends of fascism are enraged

The Global Peace Coalition, a group associated with Saddleback pastor Dr. Rick Warren, two days ago awarded President Bush its first-ever International Medal of Peace.

The award honors Bush’s massive campaign to prevent and treat AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria in Africa, but it also obviously recognizes Bush’s leadership in the drive to replace tyranny with democracy, which is the world’s only hope for a lasting peace.

Naturally, the pseudo-liberals who lament the fall of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein are upset that Bush received the award. They had hoped the Taliban and Saddam could torture, starve, oppress and murder forever, and they oppose ending any war in freedom’s favor.

Started two wars? Tonight, Alan Colmes asked Dr. Warren how he could give a Medal of Peace to a president "who started two wars." Apparently, Colmes' memory is short.

Bush is ending two wars, one started when Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990 and not really ended by Saddam's 1991 defeat because the fascist regime was left in power. After agreeing in 1991 to cease-fire terms, Saddam violated those terms by repressing the Iraqi people, supporting terrorism and failing to cooperate with U.N. arms inspectors.

The other war started when the Taliban-backed al-Qaida murdered nearly 3,000 Americans on Sept. 11, 2001. Remember, Alan?

A separate peace. Was the Clinton presidency so dedicated to peace? Did it serve the cause of peace to allow U.S. troops to get caught in a Mogadishu crossfire and then flee Somalia, signaling to terrorists that Americans have no nerve? Did it help that the Clinton Justice Department botched the investigation of the first World Trade Center bombing and then allowed the man who mixed the chemicals for that attack to return to Iraq?

Did it serve the cause of peace to take no effective action against Saddam for his repeated cease-fire violations, the very same violations that brought on the economic sanctions that Ramsey Clark claimed killed 1.5 million Iraqis from 1991 to 1999? (Clark no doubt was exaggerating, but those sanctions hurt, in part because Saddam was diverting Oil for Food money for his palaces and payoffs.)

Did it serve the cause of peace in 1994 to ignore the preventable Rwanda genocide that took 800,000 lives? And did the Clinton presidency promote peace by failing to capture or kill Osama bin Laden when it had the chance, and by not noticing the Arabs suddenly showing up in the United States for flight training in 2000?

Anti-war president. During the George W. Bush years, had the Taliban and Saddam been allowed to continue their repression unchecked, their local populations and the world itself would have been subject to more abuses, genocide and bigger wars for decades on end. But Bush said no to such a future.

Bush relentlessly battled fascism and other diseases, and he put the world on a course toward greater progress and a wider peace.

Frank Warner