WHY GEORGE BUSH IS TODAY’S CHURCHILL

The writer is Canadian

Comparing U.S. President George Bush with Winston Churchill may seem a stretch. Yet there’s a parallel — not with Churchill of the war years, when he was the “free” world’s most admired leader, but with Churchill of the 1930s when he stood alone, warning about the rise of Nazism.

Then, pacifism was rampant in Britain and Europe. Hitler’s aggression was rationalized by wishful thinking. Peace at any price.

Except for Churchill. He began warning that the Nazis must be stopped when they occupied the Rhineland in 1936. He urged an alliance of Britain, France and the Soviet Union to stop Hitler’s expansion. He was called a warmonger, an enemy of peace, reviled in print and in speeches. Few stood with him.

History has proven Churchill right.

With the U.S. election entering the home stretch, Bush is under the same sort of attacks for his war on terrorism and Iraq that Churchill endured before WWII. Critics among both Republicans and Democrats worry that America acted alone, without approval of the UN Security Council, and without support of France and Germany.

The “war” aspects of Afghanistan and Iraq were so successful that criticism was muted. It’s the “peace” and trying to bring democracy to Iraq that has revived critics, who now give Bush the sort of treatment Churchill once received for warning about Hitler.

Sen. John Kerry’s prime theme is that Bush has made America resented — especially by France and Germany. What most overlook is that by his war on terrorism, Bush is doing now what Churchill was advocating in the mid-1930s.

More than that, Bush is doing what the UN is supposed to do, but rarely has — curb tyrannies that threaten security and stability, and which indulge in oppression and human rights abuses.

Britain, under Prime Minister Tony Blair, supports America. So does Australia, and countries like Poland, and former communist countries of East Europe. Italy, too. And since the terrorist attack on the school in Beslan, Russia seems ready to join this new alliance against Islamic terror that threatens civilization.

Canada, when Jean Chretien was PM, opted not to join the war against Saddam Hussein — the first time in our history that we’ve chosen not to stand with traditional allies. (Agree or not, what’s going on in Iraq is part of the war against terrorism).

Bush’s is not the only voice, but his is the loudest. Unlike Churchill, who had no power when he urged Britain and the West to wake up, Bush has power. And the “wakeup call” was 9/11.

Today’s election rhetoric shouldn’t detract from the struggle that’s going on. If Bush prevails, the world benefits — that’s the broad picture, not the narrow one of merely defeating an enemy.

Success might also rescue the UN, which has become a forum for anti-western rhetoric and moral corruption. At the UN, human rights too often are something for speeches, not action.

For a dozen years, before the U.S. and Britain acted after 9/11, Saddam Hussein thumbed his nose at various UN resolutions. That has changed. Saddam is no more, and Libya’s Moammar Khaddafi has backed off terrorism and weapons of mass instability.

Syria now wants more cordial relations with the U.S. and says it will curb border insurgency. Pakistan has a useful ally. A democratic movement is active inside Iran. North Korea is curbing its nuclear threats. Russia is on side as never before. “New” Europe is more co-operative with America than “old” Europe.

For those who think Bush is too stubborn, too aggressive since 9/11, it might be noted (as Churchill would note) that the previous administration of Bill Clinton was too soft, too weak, too hesitant about terrorism — witness the feeble response to the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, the attack on the USS Cole, and treating the 1993 World Trade Center bombing as a domestic crime rather than an Islamic terrorist act.

Firmness then, like firmness with Hitler in 1936, might have prevented 9/11.
While Kerry and others may deplore the problems, setbacks and slow progress in Iraq, Bush has stood tall for freedom, and by its example may even give courage to the usually craven UN. In short, America and Britain have assumed a leadership role that will benefit the world. More than that, they are right.

If, indeed, Islamic terrorism is a world threat as Nazism once was, the time to fight it is now, not when it has gained even more strength. That has guided Bush and Blair, and it is to Canada’s shame that our elected leaders have adopted a more passive role.

Churchill would not be proud of us.

Peter Worthington writes for the Toronto Sun in Ontario, Canada.