I saw the President's inaugural address in a very crowded chow hall during breakfast here in lovely Kuwait. I really couldn't hear much of it due to the level of ambient noise so I had to come and look it up online. For those of you who are curious my research assistant Mr. Google has the transcript located right here.
Currency Recitations? No problem.
On why we fight outside our own borders during the War of Terror :
"For as long as whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny -- prone to ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder, violence will gather and multiply in destructive power, and cross the most defended borders, and raise a mortal threat."
...
"We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands."
Damn right. I would rather have Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi running around throwing his mujahedeen at our fortified gun positions and looking over his shoulder everywhere he turns in a free and democratizing Iraq than having his ass free in Saddam's nurturing and encouraging Iraq regime so he would be free to throw these same muj's at unprepared and indefensible civlian targets stateside.
On helping those who wish to help thmselves:
"America will not impose our own style of government on the unwilling. Our goal, instead, is to help others find their own voice, attain their own freedom and make their own way."
Believe me, the day that Korea, Germany, Iraq, the Phillipines, Japan or any of a number of other "occupied" (according to the most lunatic of the left and right) hold a referendum that shows the majority want us to withdraw our troops will will be gone in a heartbeat.
If we were "occupying" the nations who host our military I would be downtown swilling back beer I took at gunpoint with a woman on my arm that I took the same way. That ain't the way it is folks. Wake up and smell the "not Vietnam" blend of morning roast.
On Human Rights :
"America will not pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains, or that women welcome humiliation and servitude, or that any human being aspires to live at the mercy of bullies."
No, we will leave that "job" to the UN.
On what the Lunatic Fringe just can't grasp.
"Our country has accepted obligations that are difficult to fulfill and would be dishonorable to abandon."
...
"Make the choice to serve in a cause larger than your wants, larger than yourself, and in your days you will add not just to the wealth of our country but to its character."
Some things are worth American lives (even mine) folks. Freedom for others is one of them. Step out of your self centered worlds. "Freedom for Hajji" (as the lower end of the soldier intellectual spectrum likes to call Arab) is the same as "Freedom for the Colonials" back in the Revolutionary war. We needed help to do it and so do they.
GWB may not be the most consistently well spoken of our Presidents but he knows how to trot out the good ones when it counts. I would have loved to do this one in a speech competition.
