I put my left hand on the Bible and raised my right as the ailing chief justice administered the thirty-five-word oath. When I closed with “So help me God,” the cannons boomed a twenty-one-gun salute. I hugged Laura and the girls, stepped back, and soaked in the moment.
Taking the oath of office for the second time. White House/Susan Sterner
Then it was time for the speech:At this second gathering, our duties are defined not by the words I use, but by the history we have seen together. For a half century, America defended our own freedom by standing watch on distant borders. After the shipwreck of communism came years of relative quiet, years of repose, years of sabbatical—and then there came a day of fire.We have seen our vulnerability—and we have seen its deepest source. For as long as whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny—prone to ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder—violence will gather, and multiply in destructive power, and cross the most defended borders, and raise a mortal threat. There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment, and expose the pretensions of tyrants, and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant, and that is the force of human freedom.We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world. … So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.
After 9/11, I developed a strategy to protect the country that came to be known as the Bush Doctrine: First, make no distinction between the terrorists and the nations that harbor them—and hold both to account. Second, take the fight to the enemy overseas before they can attack us again here at home. Third, confront threats before they fully materialize. And fourth, advance liberty and hope as an alternative to the enemy’s ideology of repression and fear.
The freedom agenda, as I called the fourth prong, was both idealistic and realistic. It was idealistic in that freedom is a universal gift from Almighty God. It was realistic because freedom is the most practical way to protect our country in the long run. As I said in my Second Inaugural Address, “America’s vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one.”
The transformative power of freedom had been proven in places like South Korea, Germany, and Eastern Europe. For me, the most vivid example of freedom’s power was my relationship with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan. Koizumi was one of the first world leaders to offer his support after 9/11. How ironic. Sixty years earlier, my father had fought the Japanese as a Navy pilot. Koizumi’s father had served in the government of Imperial Japan. Now their sons were working together to keep the peace. Something big had changed since World War II: By adopting a Japanese-style democracy, an enemy had become an ally.
In addition to helping spread democracy, Junichiro Koizumi was a huge Elvis fan and visited Graceland. White House/Eric Draper
Announcing the freedom agenda was one step. Implementing it was another. In some places, such as Afghanistan and Iraq, we had a unique responsibility to give the people we liberated a chance to build free societies. But these examples were the exception, not the rule. I made clear that the freedom agenda was “not primarily the task of arms.” We would advance freedom by supporting fledgling democratic governments in places like the Palestinian Territories, Lebanon, Georgia, and Ukraine. We would encourage dissidents and democratic reformers suffering under repressive regimes in Iran, Syria, North Korea, and Venezuela. And we would advocate for freedom while maintaining strategic relationships with nations like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Russia, and China.
Critics charged that the freedom agenda was a way for America to impose our values on others. But freedom is not an American value; it is a universal value. Freedom cannot be imposed; it must be chosen. And when people are given the choice, they choose freedom. At the end of World War II, there were about two dozen democracies in the world. When I took office in January 2001, there were 120.
Shortly after the 2004 election, I read The Case for Democracy by Natan Sharansky, a dissident who spent nine years in the Soviet gulags. In the book Sharansky describes how he and his fellow prisoners were inspired by hearing leaders like Ronald Reagan speak with moral clarity and call for their freedom.
In one memorable passage, Sharansky describes a fellow Soviet dissident who likened a tyrannical state to a soldier who constantly points a gun at a prisoner. Eventually, his arms tire and the prisoner escapes. I considered it America’s responsibility to put pressure on the arms of the world’s tyrants. Making that goal a central part of our foreign policy was one of my most consequential decisions as president.
The great tide of freedom that swept much of the world during the second half of the twentieth century had largely bypassed one region: the Middle East.
The UN’s Arab Human Development Report, released in 2002, revealed the bleak state of the region: One in three people was illiterate. Unemployment averaged 15 percent. Less than 1 percent of the population had access to the Internet. Maternal mortality rates rivaled those of the least developed countries in the world. Economic output per capita was minuscule.
The authors of the UN report, a group of respected Arab scholars, attributed the depressing results to three deficits: a deficit in knowledge, a deficit in women’s empowerment, and, most important, a deficit in freedom.
For most of the Cold War, America’s priority in the Middle East was stability. Our alliances were based on anticommunism, a strategy that made sense at the time. But under the surface, resentment and anger built. Many people turned to radical clerics and mosques as a release. Amid these conditions, terrorists found fertile recruiting ground. Then nineteen terrorists born in the Middle East turned up on planes in the United States. After 9/11, I decided that the stability we had been promoting was a mirage. The focus of the freedom agenda would be the Middle East.
Six months before I took office, the Camp David peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians fell apart. President Clinton had worked tirelessly to bring together Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Barak made a generous offer to turn over most of the West Bank and Gaza, two territories with majority Palestinian populations that were occupied by Israeli forces and dotted with Israeli settlements. Arafat turned him down.
Two months later, in September 2000, frustration over the failed peace accord—along with prominent Israeli leader Ariel Sharon’s provocative visit to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount—led to the Second Intifada. Palestinian extremists, many affiliated with the terrorist group Hamas, launched a wave of terrorist attacks against innocent civilians in Israel.
I didn’t blame President Clinton for the failure at Camp David or the violence that followed. I blamed Arafat. America, Europe, and the United Nations had flooded the Palestinian Territories with development aid. A good portion of it was diverted to Arafat’s bank account. He made the Forbes list of the world’s wealthiest “kings, queens, and despots.” Yet his people remained trapped in poverty, hopelessness, and extremism. For a Nobel Peace Prize recipient, he sure didn’t seem very interested in peace.