Bush Likens Terrorism Fight To Cold War
Bush likens terrorism fight to Cold War
The president makes the analogy during the D.C. dedication of the Victims of Communism Memorial.
http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_6126811
By Omar Fekeiki The Washington Post
Article Last Updated: 06/13/2007 12:55:02 AM MDT
President Bush speaks at the dedication of the Victims of Communism Memorial in Washington, Tuesday, June 12, 2007. (AP | Charles Dharapak)
Washington - President Bush, attending the dedication of a memorial to an estimated 100 million victims of communist regimes, on Tuesday compared the fight against radical Islam to the Cold War battle against totalitarian communism.
In warning Americans that "evil is real and must be confronted," Bush also equated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks with the tyrannical rule imposed on residents of countries such as China, North Korea and the former Soviet Union.
"Like the communists, the terrorists and radicals who have attacked our nation are followers of a murderous ideology that despises freedom, crushes all dissent, has expansionist ambitions and pursues totalitarian aims," he said at the ceremony.
"Like the communists, our new enemies believe the innocent can be murdered to serve a radical vision. Like the communists, our new enemies are dismissive of free peoples, claiming that those of us who live in liberty are weak and lack the resolve to defend our free way of life."
The ceremony was held on the 20th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's famous speech at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, when he implored Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall."
Two years later, the wall fell.
The Victims of Communism Memorial is a bronze "Goddess of Democracy" statue. It is a replica of a replica - a reproduction of the papier-mache statue that Chinese students modeled on the Statue of Liberty and carried into Tiananmen Square during pro-democracy protests in 1989.
The memorial was 17 years in the making. The idea was born in 1990, two months after the Berlin Wall came down, said Lee Edwards, a historian who is chairman of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.
"It was clear for several of us after the fall of the wall that there is a certain fading of the memory of communism, and there is a need to remind people of victims of communism," he said.
The memorial was built with $950,000 in private funds.
