[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George W. Bush (2002, Book I)]
[June 1, 2002]
[Pages 917-922]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Commencement Address at the United States Military Academy in




West Point, New York
June 1, 2002

    Thank you very much, General Lennox. Mr. Secretary, Governor 
Pataki, Members of the United States 
Congress, Academy staff and faculty, distinguished guests, proud family 
members, and graduates: I want to thank you for your welcome. Laura and 
I are especially honored to visit this great institution in your 
bicentennial year.
    In every corner of America, the words ``West Point'' command 
immediate respect. This place where the Hudson River bends is more than 
a fine institution of learning. The United States Military Academy is 
the guardian of values that have shaped the soldiers who have shaped the 
history of the world.
    A few of you have followed in the path of the perfect West Point 
graduate Robert E. Lee, who never received a single demerit in 4 years. 
Some of you followed in the path of the imperfect graduate Ulysses S. 
Grant, who had his fair share of demerits and said the happiest day of 
his life was ``the day I left West Point.'' [Laughter] During my college 
years, I guess you could say I was--[laughter]--during my college years, 
I guess you could say I was a Grant man. [Laughter]
    You walk in the tradition of Eisenhower and MacArthur, Patton and 
Bradley--the commanders who saved a civilization. And

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you walk in the tradition of second lieutenants who did the same by 
fighting and dying on distant battlefields.
    Graduates of this Academy have brought creativity and courage to 
every field of endeavor. West Point produced the chief engineer of the 
Panama Canal, the mind behind the Manhattan Project, the first American 
to walk in space. This fine institution gave us the man they say 
invented baseball and other young men over the years who perfected the 
game of football. You know this, but many in America don't--George C. 
Marshall, a VMI graduate, is said to have given this order: ``I want an 
officer for a secret and dangerous mission. I want a West Point football 
player.''
    As you leave here today, I know there's one thing you'll never miss 
about this place: being a plebe. [Laughter] But even a plebe at West 
Point is made to feel he or she has some standing in the world. 
[Laughter] I'm told that plebes, when asked whom they outrank, are 
required to answer this: ``Sir, the Superintendent's dog--[laughter]--
the Commandant's cat, and all the admirals in the whole damn Navy.'' I 
probably won't be sharing that with the Secretary of the Navy. 
[Laughter]
    West Point is guided by tradition, and in honor of the ``Golden 
Children of the Corps,'' I will observe one of the traditions you 
cherish most. As the Commander in Chief, I hereby grant amnesty to all 
cadets who are on restriction for minor conduct offenses. [Applause] 
Those of you in the end zone might have cheered a little early--
[laughter]--because, you see, I'm going to let General Lennox define exactly what ``minor'' means. 
[Laughter]
    Every West Point class is commissioned to the Armed Forces. Some 
West Point classes are also commissioned by history to take part in a 
great new calling for their country. Speaking here to the class of 1942, 
6 months after Pearl Harbor, General Marshall said, ``We're determined 
that before the Sun sets on this terrible struggle, our flag will be 
recognized throughout the world as a symbol of freedom on the one hand 
and of overwhelming power on the other.'' Officers graduating that year 
helped fulfill that mission, defeating Japan and Germany and then 
reconstructing those nations as allies. West Point graduates of the 
1940s saw the rise of a deadly new challenge--the challenge of imperial 
communism--and opposed it from Korea to Berlin to Vietnam, and in the 
cold war from beginning to end. And as the Sun set on their struggle, 
many of those West Point officers lived to see a world transformed.
    History has also issued its call to your generation. In your last 
year, America was attacked by a ruthless and resourceful enemy. You 
graduate from this Academy in a time of war, taking your place in an 
American military that is powerful and is honorable. Our war on terror 
is only begun, but in Afghanistan it was begun well.
    I am proud of the men and women who have fought on my orders. 
America is profoundly grateful for all who serve the cause of freedom 
and for all who have given their lives in its defense. This Nation 
respects and trusts our military, and we are confident in your victories 
to come.
    This war will take many turns we cannot predict. Yet, I am certain 
of this: Wherever we carry it, the American flag will stand not only for 
our power but for freedom. Our Nation's cause has always been larger 
than our Nation's defense. We fight, as we always fight, for a just 
peace, a peace that favors human liberty. We will defend the peace 
against threats from terrorists and tyrants. We will preserve the peace 
by building good relations among the great powers. And we will extend 
the peace by encouraging free and open societies on every continent.
    Building this just peace is America's opportunity and America's 
duty. From this day forward, it is your challenge as well, and we will 
meet this challenge together. You will wear the uniform of a great and 
unique country. America has no empire to

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extend or utopia to establish. We wish for others only what we wish for 
ourselves, safety from violence, the rewards of liberty, and the hope 
for a better life.
    In defending the peace, we face a threat with no precedent. Enemies 
in the past needed great armies and great industrial capabilities to 
endanger the American people and our Nation. The attacks of September 
the 11th required a few hundred thousand dollars in the hands of a few 
dozen evil and deluded men. All of the chaos and suffering they caused 
came at much less than the cost of a single tank. The dangers have not 
passed. This Government and the American people are on watch. We are 
ready, because we know the terrorists have more money and more men and 
more plans.
    The gravest danger to freedom lies at the perilous crossroads of 
radicalism and technology. When the spread of chemical and biological 
and nuclear weapons, along with ballistic missile technology--when that 
occurs, even weak states and small groups could attain a catastrophic 
power to strike great nations. Our enemies have declared this very 
intention and have been caught seeking these terrible weapons. They want 
the capability to blackmail us or to harm us or to harm our friends, and 
we will oppose them with all our power.
    For much of the last century, America's defense relied on the cold 
war doctrines of deterrence and containment. In some cases, those 
strategies still apply, but new threats also require new thinking. 
Deterrence--the promise of massive retaliation against nations--means 
nothing against shadowy terrorist networks with no nation or citizens to 
defend. Containment is not possible when unbalanced dictators with 
weapons of mass destruction can deliver those weapons on missiles or 
secretly provide them to terrorist allies. We cannot defend America and 
our friends by hoping for the best. We cannot put our faith in the word 
of tyrants who solemnly sign nonproliferation treaties and then 
systemically break them. If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we 
will have waited too long.
    Homeland defense and missile defense are part of stronger security; 
they're essential priorities for America. Yet, the war on terror will 
not be won on the defensive. We must take the battle to the enemy, 
disrupt his plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge. In 
the world we have entered, the only path to safety is the path of 
action, and this Nation will act.
    Our security will require the best intelligence to reveal threats 
hidden in caves and growing in laboratories. Our security will require 
modernizing domestic agencies such as the FBI, so they're prepared to 
act and act quickly against danger. Our security will require 
transforming the military you will lead, a military that must be ready 
to strike at a moment's notice in any dark corner of the world. And our 
security will require all Americans to be forward-looking and resolute, 
to be ready for preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty 
and to defend our lives.
    The work ahead is difficult. The choices we will face are complex. 
We must uncover terror cells in 60 or more countries, using every tool 
of finance, intelligence, and law enforcement. Along with our friends 
and allies, we must oppose proliferation and confront regimes that 
sponsor terror, as each case requires. Some nations need military 
training to fight terror, and we'll provide it. Other nations oppose 
terror but tolerate the hatred that leads to terror, and that must 
change. We will send diplomats where they are needed, and we will send 
you, our soldiers, where you're needed.
    All nations that decide for aggression and terror will pay a price. 
We will not leave the safety of America and the peace of the planet at 
the mercy of a few mad terrorists and tyrants. We will lift this dark 
threat from our country and from the world.
    Because the war on terror will require resolve and patience, it will 
also require

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firm moral purpose. In this way our struggle is similar to the cold war. 
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.
    America confronted imperial communism in many different ways, 
diplomatic, economic, and military. Yet, moral clarity was essential to 
our victory in the cold war. When leaders like John F. Kennedy and 
Ronald Reagan refused to gloss over the brutality of tyrants, they gave 
hope to prisoners and dissidents and exiles and rallied free nations to 
a great cause.
    Some worry that it is somehow undiplomatic or impolite to speak the 
language of right and wrong. I disagree. Different circumstances require 
different methods but not different moralities. 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 the guilty. We are in a 
conflict between good and evil, and America will call evil by its name. 
By confronting evil and lawless regimes, we do not create a problem; we 
reveal a problem. And we will lead the world in opposing it.
    As we defend the peace, we also have an historic opportunity to 
preserve the peace. We have our best chance since the rise of the 
nation-state in the 17th century to build a world where the great powers 
compete in peace instead of prepare for war. The history of the last 
century, in particular, was dominated by a series of destructive 
national rivalries that left battlefields and graveyards across the 
Earth. Germany fought France, the Axis fought the Allies, and then the 
East fought the West, in proxy wars and tense standoffs, against a 
backdrop of nuclear Armageddon.
    Competition between great nations is inevitable, but armed conflict 
in our world is not. More and more, civilized nations find ourselves on 
the same side, united by common dangers of terrorist violence and chaos. 
America has and intends to keep military strengths beyond challenge, 
thereby making the destabilizing arms races of other eras pointless and 
limiting rivalries to trade and other pursuits of peace.
    Today, the great powers are also increasingly united by common 
values, instead of divided by conflicting ideologies. The United States, 
Japan, and our Pacific friends, and now all of Europe, share a deep 
commitment to human freedom, embodied in strong alliances such as NATO. 
And the tide of liberty is rising in many other nations.
    Generations of West Point officers planned and practiced for battles 
with Soviet Russia. I've just returned from a new Russia, now a country 
reaching toward democracy and our partner in the war against terror. 
Even in China, leaders are discovering that economic freedom is the only 
lasting source of national wealth. In time, they will find that social 
and political freedom is the only true source of national greatness.
    When the great powers share common values, we are better able to 
confront serious regional conflicts together, better able to cooperate 
in preventing the spread of violence or economic chaos. In the past, 
great power rivals took sides in difficult regional problems, making 
divisions deeper and more complicated. Today, from the Middle East to 
South Asia, we are gathering broad international coalitions to increase 
the pressure for peace. We must build strong and great power relations 
when times are good to help manage crisis when times are bad. America 
needs partners to preserve the peace, and we will work with every nation 
that shares this noble goal.
    And finally, America stands for more than the absence of war. We 
have a great

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opportunity to extend a just peace by replacing poverty, repression, and 
resentment around the world with hope of a better day. Through most of 
history, poverty was persistent, inescapable, and almost universal. In 
the last few decades, we've seen nations from Chile to South Korea build 
modern economies and freer societies, lifting millions of people out of 
despair and want. And there's no mystery to this achievement.
    The 20th century ended with a single surviving model of human 
progress, based on nonnegotiable demands of human dignity, the rule of 
law, limits on the power of the state, respect for women, and private 
property and free speech and equal justice and religious tolerance. 
America cannot impose this vision, yet we can support and reward 
governments that make the right choices for their own people. In our 
development aid, in our diplomatic efforts, in our international 
broadcasting, and in our educational assistance, the United States will 
promote moderation and tolerance and human rights. And we will defend 
the peace that makes all progress possible.
    When it comes to the common rights and needs of men and women, there 
is no clash of civilizations. 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. And their governments should listen to their 
hopes.
    A truly strong nation will permit legal avenues of dissent for all 
groups that pursue their aspirations without violence. An advancing 
nation will pursue economic reform, to unleash the great entrepreneurial 
energy of its people. A thriving nation will respect the rights of 
women, because no society can prosper while denying opportunity to half 
its citizens. Mothers and fathers and children across the Islamic world 
and all the world share the same fears and aspirations: In poverty, they 
struggle; in tyranny, they suffer; and as we saw in Afghanistan, in 
liberation, they celebrate.
    America has a greater objective than controlling threats and 
containing resentment. We will work for a just and peaceful world beyond 
the war on terror.
    The bicentennial class of West Point now enters this drama. With all 
in the United States Army, you will stand between your fellow citizens 
and grave danger. You will help establish a peace that allows millions 
around the world to live in liberty and to grow in prosperity. You will 
face times of calm and times of crisis, and every test will find you 
prepared, because you're the men and women of West Point. You leave here 
marked by the character of this Academy, carrying with you the highest 
ideals of our Nation.
    Toward the end of his life, Dwight Eisenhower recalled the first day 
he stood on the plain at West Point. ``The feeling came over me,'' he 
said, ``that the expression `the United States of America' would now and 
henceforth mean something different than it had ever before. From here 
on, it would be the Nation I would be serving, not myself.''
    Today, your last day at West Point, you begin a life of service in a 
career unlike any other. You've answered a calling to hardship and 
purpose, to risk and honor. At the end of every day, you will know that 
you have faithfully done your duty. May you always bring to that duty 
the high standards of this great American institution. May you always be 
worthy of the long gray line that stretches two centuries behind you. On 
behalf of the Nation, I congratulate each one of you for the commission 
you've earned, for the credit you bring to the United States of America.
    May God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 9:13 a.m. in Michie Stadium. In his 
remarks, he referred to Lt. Gen. William J. Lennox, Jr., USA, 
Superintendent, West Point Military Academy;

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Secretary of the Army Thomas E. White; and Gov. George E. Pataki of New 
York.