Democracy Versus Tyranny
Bush stated that America's involvement in Afghanistan is a necessity, part of an overall historical goal of trying to end tyranny worldwide, because "problems originating in a failed and oppressive state seven thousand miles away" orchestrated the September 11th attacks and continue to "shelter terrorists, feed resentment and radicalism, and seek weapons of mass destruction" whereas Democracies give hope and "respect the rights of their citizens and their neighbors."
The president pointed out that there are 98 more Democratic countries in 2006 than there were in 1945, in addition to Women's suffrage in Afghanistan, the Purple Revolution in Iraq, and political discourse in Lebanon and Egypt, as evidence that Democracy, freedom, and self-governance have grown throughout the world. Although many social and political analysts would agree that more people live in free and fair societies than at the end of World War II, all of the examples Bush provided lay in the Middle East.
He went on to say that the "demands of justice, and the peace of this world, require... freedom" for the citizens of nations in the Axis of Evil; Syria, Burma, Zimbabwe, North Korea, and Iran.
Read more about this topic: 2006 State Of The Union Address
Famous quotes containing the words democracy and/or tyranny:
“In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed—they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock!”
—Orson Welles (1915–84)
“In Russia, whatever be the appearance of things, violence and arbitrary rule is at the bottom of them all. Tyranny rendered calm by the influence of terror is the only kind of happiness which this government is able to afford its people.”
—Marquis De Custine (1790–1857)