December 14, 2005 | By Nathaniel Ward

Fighting for American principle in Iraq

America will remain firm in its principled commitment to create a free and secure Iraq and so advance American national security, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday at The Heritage Foundation.

“When America leads with principle in the world, freedom’s cause grows stronger,” she said. “We saw this when Ronald Reagan spurned friendly dictators and supported freedom’s cause in Latin America. We saw this as well when Reagan called out the true character of the Soviet Union and liberated a democratic longing that ended the Cold War. And we are seeing this today, as the world awakens to the promise of a free Iraq.”

An opportunity for freedom

Iraq’s new freedom is bringing much-needed reform to the Middle East, she added. “Their democratic example is inspiring impatient patriots in places like Lebanon and Egypt and the Palestinian territories—courageous men and women who are now finding ever more supporters in the international community to champion their aspirations and defend their dignity.”

If we persevere, we have the opportunity to create a beacon of freedom in the oppressive Middle East, she said.

But if we withdraw before we achieve victory, we could create an opportunity for America’s enemies. We would let the terrorists win (or at least give them a fighting chance).

The world on our side

In the address, broadcast live on C-SPAN television from Heritage’s Douglas and Sarah Allison Auditorium, Secretary Rice asserted that “we will not retreat from a fight that we can and must win.”

Secretary Rice told the overflow audience that the world now recognizes the importance of creating a free and secure Iraq. “Countries that previously doubted the promise of democracy in Iraq are rallying to Iraq’s side.”

Today, 30 countries maintain more than 22,000 troops in Iraq. Scores of nations and international organizations are helping rebuild Iraq and “liberate the entrepreneurial spirit,” she said.

Iraqis determine their own fate

Tomorrow, Iraqis go to the polls to choose their own leaders. The new leaders will form the first government under Iraq’s democratic constitution, ratified overwhelmingly earlier in the fall. It is expected that even Iraq’s Sunni minority will participate after boycotting earlier elections—a sure sign that Iraq is growing freer and more stable.

“The Iraqi people are seizing an unprecedented opportunity to live at last in peace and in freedom,” Secretary Rice explained.

Read a full report on Secretary Rice’s speech on MyHeritage.org.

Heritage in the news

Secretary’s Rice’s talk at The Heritage Foundation made quite a splash.

The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Times, The Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse, Voice of America, AFX news, RFE news and Washington File all reported on her speech today. Most focused on her allegations that the world was doing too little to help prosecute former dictator Saddam Hussein.

President Bush defends the war

On the eve of Iraq’s elections, President Bush made a speech today defending his decision to liberate that country.

“It is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong,” he said. “As President, I’m responsible for the decision to go into Iraq.”

But he insisted that the war in Iraq has made America safer. “My decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision. Saddam was a threat—and the American people and the world is better off because he is no longer in power. We are in Iraq today because our goal has always been more than the removal of a brutal dictator; it is to leave a free and democratic Iraq in its place.”

Meanwhile, the war on spending continues

Now is a scary time to be a conservative: Congress is in session, and they’ve said they’re going to work on cutting some fat from the budget. Translation: they’re going to try to find clever and interesting new ways to expand the deficit.

So I talked to some of the spending experts at Heritage and they came up with a conservative take on some of the Congressional proposals.

The top five things no fiscal conservative could possibly support:

1. Wasteful farm subsidies—$102 billion. Over the next 5 years, the government is scheduled to spend $102 billion on farm subsidies that drive up prices for U.S. shoppers, burden taxpayers, and put poor farmers in developing countries at a disadvantage in trade. Congress offered to “cut” subsidies by spending $60 billion more.
2. Higher-education grant extensions—$8 billion. The House and Senate both offered to trim some wasteful spending here, but the Senate hasn’t justified an additional $8 billion it wants to spend on one such program.
3. Subsidies for digital television—$3 billion. Congress wants to spend taxpayers’ money to buy fancy cable boxes that most Americans can’t use.
4. Medicare smoke and mirrors—hide true costs. Congress has a clever new way to “save money” on Medicare in 2006: pay two weeks of 2006’s expenses in 2007. That just postpones the problem.
5. ‘Pay for Performance’—tie doctors’ hands. Congress wants to create national standards for Medicare doctors, and they call the program “Pay for Performance.” While this sounds like free enterprise, it’s just more bureaucracy tying doctors’ hands.

The top five things no fiscal conservative could do without:

1. Delay the Medicare drug benefit—save $40 to $80 billion. A fiscally responsible budget reconciliation bill would delay the Medicare drug entitlement for two years and target aid to the truly needy.
2. Medicaid flexibility—save $6.5 billion. A set of proposals in the House would give the states flexibility to serve Medicaid enrollees better.
3. Ending the Byrd Amendment—save $3.2 billion. The Byrd tariffs raises prices for US consumers and increases business reliance on government.
4. Oil exploration in ANWR—save more than $2.5 billion. Coming off a year marked by volatile energy prices and disruptions in energy supplies, the need for more energy sources is more apparent than ever. Land-use fees and royalties would net the government billions of dollars.
5. Modest cuts to Food Stamps—save $600 million. The way things stand now, you can’t qualify for food stamps if your income is above a certain level—unless, that is, you receive certain other government benefits, such as job training.

Read Andrew Grossman’s full report on spending action on Heritage.org.

In other news

• Marine Corps Major Ben Connable, who is gladly returning to Iraq for another tour of duty, writes in The Washington Post that “for every depressing story of unrest and instability there is an untold story of potential and hope. The impression of Iraq as an unfathomable quagmire is false and dangerously misleading.”
• Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) warned liberals not to filibuster Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito. If they do, he said, conservatives could vote to eliminate judicial filibusters by using the “constitutional option.”
• Just in case his Holocaust-denying comments were too vague last week, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad clarified them today. “They have fabricated a legend under the name ‘Massacre of the Jews,’ and they hold it higher than God himself, religion itself and the prophets themselves.”
• The media happened to not report on the news that the Army beat its recruitment goals for November. Every month the Army missed its goals, though, we were assured that the war in Iraq was to blame.
• A new poll finds that 94 percent of Americans believe in God, five percent are unsure and one percent does not believe.

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