In a recent speech promoting the presence of U.S. armed forces in Iraq, President Bush said, “The security of our country is directly linked to the liberty of the Iraqi people. This will require more difficult days of fighting and sacrifice, yet I am confident that our strategy will result in victory.”

 

Déjà vu?

 

Yes, a reoccurring one at that if you’ve picked up the paper over the past three years.

 

Can you blame the guy? With approval ratings of about 41 percent our nervous Commander in Chief probably thought, “If it isn’t broken, why fix it?” as he copied and pasted these words from a speech he gave a countless amount of times over the past three years.

 

But when you compare the information presented in the speech with current events, it’s pretty easy to see the gaping holes in Bush’s logic.

 

In the beginning, “the security of our country” meant safety from terrorism. But reports about Iraq’s involvement in the 9-11 attacks came back negative. The closest weapons of mass destruction we know of are the ones Iran has been advertising for years.

 

Then the meaning of security expanded to the security of the world from an unpredictable, violent dictator. Our troops got him, and now the only unpredictable thing about Saddam is how he’ll meet his end – at the hands of the tribunal or a conveniently timed heart attack.

 

The Iraqi people are free from the threat we initially went in to eradicate. Now they are oppressed by the ethnic fighting, potential civil war and poverty.

 

When President Bush says “liberty” more than two years after announcing the successful toppling of the dictator, one cannot help but ask “liberty from what?”

 

Unless there is a clear standard for what exactly we are trying to liberate the Iraqi people from, there is no way of knowing when, or if, our goal is achieved. So far the concept of a free Iraq has been a moving target. Are we waiting for the ceasing of tensions between the Sunnis and the Shiites? That tension has been present for centuries. Where did our government get the idea that it would dissipate once we showed up? Tearing down an entire governmental structure is not like toppling a tower of building blocks – easy to take apart, easy to put back together, with pieces fitting snuggly together.

 

We are haughty in thinking that we have this democracy thing down pat and are capable of reproducing our effects wherever we choose. Is the unachieved “victory” that to which the president keeps referring year after year the lack of adherence of Iraqis to employ our blueprint of how democracy is built?

 

Many Americans have the best intention at heart when they say that we should finish the job we started. But Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither will a modern democracy when deeply rooted religious and ethnic tensions, suppressed till very recently, lie.

 

Let me guess – listening to another liberal complain about how the war in Iraq is being handled gives you another déjà vu. Good.

 

As long as our leaders keep on singing to the same tune as they did when Iraq was an entirely different country, it is our obligation to keep on asking the same questions and challenging the same assumptions.

 

Attacking foreign policy deficiencies is not just a pet cause of Bush Administration critics. As the troops learn every week, it is a serious issue and a matter of life and death. The President owes us and them more than empty, aged rhetoric.