The State of the Union Address and Terrorism

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

In Tuesday's State of the Union address, President Bush discussed four major topics related to terrorism. He was strong when discussing Iran and Iraq, but his speech left something to be desired in its discussion of the linkage between democracy and peace and its discussion of the NSA's warrantless surveillance.

Iran. The address was hawkish on Iran. Bush made an important move by emphasizing the divsion between the clerical regime and the Iranian people. He said that Iranians are "held hostage by a small clerical elite that is isolating and repressing its people." Bush also spoke directly to the Iranian people about America's respect for their freedoms. The United States has not always drawn this sharp divide between the Iranian government and its citizens. But Bush's words in the State of the Union address, coupled with other recent pronouncements of high-level officials (such as Nicholas Burns's late November speech at the School of Advanced International Studies) indicate that this will be the administration's approach in the coming months.

Iraq. Bush's most significant statement about Iraq was that, although troops levels will decline as we progress in the ground war and as Iraqi forces are able to take over, "those decisions will be made by our military commanders, not by politicians in Washington, D.C." This is the right approach in Iraq. It is good to hear Bush affirm it in the State of the Union address. Bush's words should be encouraging to Americans and Iraqis alike.

Bush also did a good job explaining that regardless of whether we believe that the Iraq war was justified, a sudden withdrawal would be disastrous: "A sudden withdrawal of our forces from Iraq would abandon our Iraqi allies to death and prison, would put men like bin Laden and Zarqawi in charge of a strategic country, and show that a pledge from America means little. Members of Congress, however we feel about the decisions and debates of the past, our nation has only one option: We must keep our word, defeat our enemies, and stand behind the American military in this vital mission."

Bush also offered a three pronged plan for Iraq consisting of building an inclusive government, continuing reconstruction efforts, and striking terrorist targets while training Iraqi forces. While Bush oversells this as "a clear plan for victory," it is at least a reasonable approach going forward.

Democratization and peace. In this address, Bush provided -- as he has many times before -- the theoretical basis for the linkage between democracy and peace: "Democracies replace resentment with hope, respect the rights of their citizens and their neighbos, and join the fight against terror." The problem with the administration's approach to democratization to date is that it has placed great emphasis on voting and much less emphasis on the liberal institutions necessary for citizens to have true options at the ballot box: institutions like freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of religion.

In the wake of the Egyptian parliamentary elections that helped bring a large number of Muslim Brotherhood members to power, the State of the Union address calls for Egypt to "open paths of peaceful opposition that will reduce the appeal of radicalism." But this highlights a weakness of our strategy to date: these paths of peaceful opposition should have been opened before the elections, rather than after the Muslim Brotherhood's strong showing. Hopefully Bush's rhetoric is a sign that we will place greater emphasis on promoting liberal institutions as we move forward.

A final problem with the section of the speech on democratization is how it dealt with Hamas's recent electoral victory. Bush said that, in the wake of these elections, "the leaders of Hamas must recognize Israel, disarm, reject terrorism, and work for lasting peace." But the fact is they won't do this. How should the U.S. respond when a democratically elected government fails to meet these minimum standards? What does this say for our democratization strategy?

NSA surveillance. It was surprising that President Bush included a discussion of the NSA's warrantless surveillance in his State of the Union address. He stated that "to prevent another attack -- based on authority given to me by the Constitution and by statute -- I have authorized a terrorist surveillance program to aggressively pursue the international communications of suspected al Qaeda operatives and affiliates to and from America." I've already examined some of the legal issues involved in defense attorneys' challenges to the NSA's surveillance. But as my colleague Victor Comras has noted, the case for the surveillance's legality is separate from the question of whether it was a good idea. FISA procedures allow the administration to begin surveillance immediately when necessary, so long as the administration reports the surveillance to the FISA court within 72 hours. The administration still hasn't made clear why there is a need to go outside the procedures in place under FISA.

Overall a well-written speech. The main flaws are that it fails to answer some obvious questions that the American public might have, and that Bush's delivery makes me miss both Reagan and Clinton as orators.

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