From: Gary L. Bauer, Chairman

           “Campaign for Working Families”

 

Date:   Friday, February 2, 2007

 

A Conversation with The President

 

I had an extraordinary opportunity yesterday to join a dozen other

individuals who were invited to the White House to meet with President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Karl Rove and others.  The discussion centered on Iraq and the larger war with Islamofascism. 

 

The meeting scheduled for 45 minutes went on for 90, and provided a fascinating glimpse of a president who believes strongly, as I do, that retreat is not an option.  I will not quote the president directly, but I do want to give you a sense of his thinking, as well as our advice to him.

 

The president repeatedly made it clear that he sees the war we are fighting as a clear struggle between good and evil.  America's foreign policy elites, Big Media, the secular Left, and most of our European allies, hate that kind of language.  After all, if one believes in moral relativism and thinks there is no objective standard of right and wrong, a president talking about war in moral terms is speaking a language they just don't understand. 

 

Yet, what else do you call people who blow up children intentionally,

behead people, shoot school teachers for educating girls, and proudly tell us in video after video that they worship death? 

 

I encouraged the president to address this point more forcefully.  As you know, we recently reported on the undercover investigation documenting the hatred being fomented against Western Civilization in many mosques throughout Great Britain.  (Fox News will air a similar expose tomorrow night at 9:00 pm.) 

 

The fact is we are at war with a religiously inspired enemy who believes he has been commanded to "kill the infidel."  The 9/11 hijackers and Palestinian homicide bombers are no different than the kamikaze pilots of World War II who worshipped the Japanese emperor as a god.  They are fanatics who intend to kill us.  No amount of diplomacy will dissuade them from their mission, and retreating from Iraq under fire will only convince them that America is weak and ready to fall.  

 

At one point in our conversation, the president spontaneously spoke up in defense of Israel, which was encouraging since the tiny Jewish state is also fighting the same jihadist enemy.  Our nations are united by a common bond of shared values in faith and freedom, and the security of one nation is linked to the other.  While some ignorantly perceive Israel as the source of our troubles, if Israel disappeared tomorrow the full fury of the jihadists would be directed at us.  We, after all, are the "great Satan" in the minds of many in the Middle East.

 

I was struck by how firm President Bush was in the rightness of this cause.  He clearly is not worried about poll numbers, and he also made it clear that he sees no viable option being offered by his critics on Capitol Hill.  By the way, Republican senators like Hagel, Collins, Snowe and Warner, who are joining with the leftwing critics in support of a meaningless, non-binding resolution, ought to be ashamed of themselves.  

 

The president I saw yesterday did not appear depressed, down, or

frustrated.  He made it clear he would be content to let history make its own judgment about his performance and decisions.  He commented on how reassuring it was to be told as he traveled the country that people were praying for him as he confronts life and death decisions on a daily basis.

 

Friends, as you know, I have areas of disagreement with the administration, as many of you do.  There is no need to repeat them here.  But I believe on the war - from the fateful morning of September 11th until today - that President Bush has led the nation, under the most trying circumstances, firmly and with resolve.  I am relieved beyond words that he has been in the Oval Office making these decisions rather than the men he defeated. 

 

I urge you to continue praying for him and I also want to urge you to encourage him.  Send any thoughts you have to me and I will personally deliver them to the White House.

  

"Thank You"

 

While Big Media was waxing nostalgic about Jane Fonda's recent return to the anti-war circuit, the story of Shauna Fleming is much bigger and far more noteworthy in my view. 

 

Miss Fleming launched a project that was taken on by her high school, Orange Lutheran in Orange, California, to collect one million "thank you" letters for our troops.  In November, she received her 2.6 millionth letter, which was presented at the Pentagon yesterday.  Shauna said, "This letter represents that every person serving in the United States armed forces has symbolically received a written 'thank you' from grateful Americans."