06/08/2002
EDITORIAL NUMBER=0-09932

MORAL CLARITY

The U.S. confronted imperial Communism in many different ways -- diplomatically, economically, and militarily. Yet, said President George W. Bush, "Moral clarity was essential to our victory in the Cold War." U.S. presidents like John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan never forgot the brutality of tyrants. America’s leaders gave hope to political prisoners, dissidents and exiles, and rallied free nations to a great cause.

Like the Cold War, the war against global terrorism requires a firmness of moral purpose. As President Bush said, "Now, as then, our enemies are totalitarians, holding a creed of power with no place for human dignity. Now, as then, they seek to impose a joyless conformity, to control every life and all of life."

"Some worry," President Bush said, "that it is somehow undiplomatic or impolite to speak the language of right and wrong." They are mistaken. Different circumstances, "require different methods, but not different moralities."

As President Bush said, "Moral truth is the same in every culture, in every time, and in every place. Targeting innocent civilians for murder is always and everywhere wrong. Brutality against women is always and everywhere wrong. There can be no neutrality between justice and cruelty, between the innocent and guilty."

When it comes to the common rights and needs of men and women, there is no clash of civilizations. President Bush said, "The requirements of freedom apply fully to Africa and Latin America and the entire Islamic world. The peoples of the Islamic nations want and deserve the same freedoms and opportunities as people in every nation."

"Mothers and fathers and children across the Islamic world, and all the world," said Mr. Bush, "share the same fears and aspirations. In poverty, they struggle. In tyranny, they suffer. And as we saw in Afghanistan, in liberation they celebrate."

The U.S. has a greater objective than controlling threats and containing resentment. As President Bush said, "We will work for a just and peaceful world beyond the war on terror."