    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George W. Bush (2006, Book II)]
    [October 20, 2006]
    [Pages 1884-1891]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a National Republican Senatorial Committee Reception
    October 20, 2006

        Thanks for coming. Please be seated. I appreciate you being here. On
    the way down, Mr. McConnell
    said, ``Keep it short; they haven't had their food yet.'' [Laughter]

    [[Page 1885]]

        But I want to thank you all for coming. As you well know, we're
    heading down the stretch here in this important political season. I want
    to thank you for helping our Senate candidates. It means a lot. I don't
    know about you, but I am absolutely confident that Mitch
    McConnell will be the leader
    of the United States Senate in 2007.
        I appreciate Mitch's
    leadership, and I appreciate the leadership of Elizabeth Dole as well. These are two of the finest United
    States Senators we have.
        Laura sends her best. She is a patient woman.
    [Laughter] She is doing just fine. I'm real proud of her. She is a
    fabulous First Lady.
        Oh, there's going to be a lot of noise here at the end of the
    campaign. There always is. And sometimes it's all meant to obscure the
    main issues. Sometimes folks don't really want to talk about the core
    issues that will affect the future of this country. I think there are
    two big issues that we need to stay focused on and I know our candidates
    are talking about, and they're issues in which there are big differences
    of opinion. And the first issue is taxes.
        There is a difference of opinion between--what we ought to be doing
    with your money, see. There are people in the Democrat Party who think
    they can spend your money far better than you can. And we believe that
    you're plenty capable of spending your own money. As a matter of fact,
    we believe that when you have more of your own money in your pocket to
    save, invest, or spend, all of us benefit; that the economy grows; that
    hope expands; that the entrepreneurial spirit is invigorated.
        And so in times of economic difficulty, I worked with Members of the
    United States Senate and the United States House to pass the largest tax
    relief since Ronald Reagan was President of the United States. We didn't
    think the Tax Code ought to penalize marriage, so we reduced the
    marriage penalty. We cut taxes for small businesses. There's a reason
    why we cut taxes for small businesses: Because we understand that 70
    percent of new jobs in America are created by small-business owners.
        We cut the taxes on capital gains and dividends, because we wanted
    to encourage investment. We understand that when people invest, it means
    that someone is more likely to be able to find a job. We cut the taxes
    on--we doubled the child tax credit. In other words, we cut the taxes on
    families with children. We put the death tax on the road to extinction.
    We don't think it's fair to tax you twice, once while you're living and
    once after you're dead. As a matter of fact, we cut taxes on everybody
    who pays taxes. [Laughter] We don't believe in this selective tax
    cutting. We said, if you're going to pay income taxes, you ought to get
    relief.
        And we had a spirited debate about whether or not the tax cuts made
    sense. A lot of the Democrats in the United States Senate said, ``These
    tax cuts are going to make the economy worse.'' They went around the
    United States saying tax cuts don't make any sense, but they did make
    sense.
        We've created 6.6 million new jobs since August of 2003. This week,
    a new report showed that real wages grew 2.2 percent over the past 12
    months. That's faster than the average for the 1990s. Because of our
    progrowth economic policies, this economy is strong. People are working.
    The entrepreneurial spirit is up. People are buying homes. Our plan
    works, and our candidates have something to run on coming this November.
        There's a difference of opinion here in Washington, and I'm going to
    continue reminding people of the clear difference of opinion in this
    campaign. Let me tell you what the recent--the top leader, the Democrat
    leader in the House of Representatives said
    recently. This is a person who aspires to be the Speaker of the House.
    She said, ``We love tax cuts.'' She actually said that. Given her
    record, she must be a secret admirer. [Laughter] Over

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    the past 5 years, she and her Democrat colleagues voted against every
    major tax cut that we passed. Time and time again, when she had her
    opportunity to show her love for tax cuts, she voted no. If this is the
    Democrats' idea of love, I wouldn't want to see what hate looks like.
    [Laughter]
        Now they're trotting out their old lines. I'm sure Elizabeth and Mitch will tell you what they're hearing out there.
    They're saying, ``Listen, we're just going to tax the rich.'' It is the
    same old, tired excuse for raising taxes. It sounds good, but that's not
    what they believe. Look at the record. In 1992, when they took over the
    White House and they campaigned on middle class tax cuts, when they got
    the capacity to deliver on their promises, they passed one of the
    largest tax increases in American history.
        Raising taxes is what the Democrats want to do; make no mistake
    about it. If they take over the Senate, they will run up your taxes.
    Raising your taxes would hurt our economy. Raising our taxes would
    diminish the entrepreneurial spirit. Raising taxes would be bad for
    small-business owners. Raising taxes is a Democrat idea of growing the
    economy, and it won't work. The best way to keep this economy strong is
    to make the tax cuts we passed permanent.
        The other issue in this campaign is which party, which group of
    leaders can keep America safe. We are at war, and it's a tough war, but
    it's a war that is necessary to protect you. Our most important job, the
    solemn responsibility of those of us who are honored to serve you in
    Washington, DC, is to do everything in our power to protect the American
    people from further attack.
        There is an enemy which--[applause]--we face a coldblooded enemy.
    You can't negotiate with these people. You cannot hope for the best,
    because they are ideologues bound by the desire to inflict damage on
    nations which love freedom. They will murder the innocent. They have no
    conscience. And they murder to achieve an objective, and that's what's
    important for our fellow citizens to understand. It may sound farfetched
    to some Americans out there, but this group of ideologues wants to
    establish a caliphate, a governing body, a--they want to spread their
    ideology of hate from Indonesia to Spain. That's what they have so
    declared. And they recognize in order to do that, they must inflict
    serious damage on America, to the point where we're willing to retreat
    from the Middle East, so they can topple moderate governments.
        Imagine a world in which radical extremists not only topple moderate
    governments so they can have territory from which to plan, plot, and
    attack America and our allies, but they have the capacity to control oil
    resources, which they would be more than willing to use in order to
    blackmail America and our allies into further retreat. You can imagine a
    circumstance in which these radicals say, ``We'll run up the price of
    oil by denying oil on the markets unless you abandon your allies such as
    Israel, or unless you further withdraw from the world.'' And compound
    that with a nuclear Iran, and the world 20 or 30 years from now is going
    to say, ``What happened to them in 2006? How come they couldn't see the
    threat? What blinded these people in order that they did not do their
    job?''
        One of the key issues in this election is who best sees the future
    and who best has the plan to deal with it? I firmly see the threats we
    face, and the best way for America to protect ourselves is to go on the
    offense and to stay on the offense. [Applause] Thank you all.
        However, going on the offense is not going to be enough to protect
    you. It's a part of a comprehensive strategy. You know, we've got to be
    right 100 percent of the time in protecting this homeland from those who
    still want to attack, and the enemy has got to be right one time. And
    therefore, I felt it was vital that our professionals who are in charge
    of protecting you have all the tools necessary to

    [[Page 1887]]

    do so. And so right after September the 11th, we worked with Congress,
    in some cases--and in some cases, we felt like we didn't need to--to put
    tools in the hands of professionals.
        One such tool was to tear down a wall that prevented law enforcement
    from talking to intelligence. I know that's hard to believe, but that's
    the reality of what had happened in our country; that's what grew up to
    be the case. How can you protect our country when you've got people
    gathering intelligence and they can't tell the law enforcement who are
    in charge of protecting you what they know?
        And so after September the 11th, I went to the United States
    Congress and said, ``Let's pass what we call the PATRIOT Act.'' It was a
    chance to make sure that we gave our folks on the frontlines of
    protecting you all the tools necessary to do so. Right after September
    the 11th, both the House and the Senate overwhelmingly passed the bill,
    but the bill needed to be reauthorized some years later. And when it
    came up for reauthorization, Democrat Members of the United States
    Senate tried to kill the bill--they, what we call here in Washington,
    filibustered. They didn't want to give that tool necessary to those who
    protect you.
        There's just a difference of opinion. We believe we're at war and we
    should give all the folks protecting you the tools necessary to do so.
    Evidently, Democrats don't. As a matter of fact, the Democrat leader,
    the person who aspires to be the majority leader in the United States
    Senate, when asked about his filibuster, he said--he proudly proclaimed
    he killed the bill. And a reporter gave him a chance to recant; he said,
    ``No, I'm proud of that.''
        I don't think that's the kind of attitude that is necessary--we can
    afford if the biggest job we have in Washington, DC, is to protect you.
    Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed, and I was able to sign the
    reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act, thanks to people like Mitch
    McConnell and Elizabeth
    Dole.
        I felt it was important that our professionals at the Central
    Intelligence Agency questioned people we picked up on the battlefield,
    in order to find out what they know, see. If you're at war, you need to
    make sure that you get as much information as possible, in order to
    protect you. It's a different kind of war. We can't measure the size of
    an infantry against these people. We don't go out and count the number
    of airplanes they have. This is a war that requires precise
    intelligence, good information, if the task is to protect you before an
    attack comes.
        And so yes, sir, I set up a program that gave our CIA professionals
    the opportunity to question people like Khalid Sheikh
    Mohammed, the person our intelligence
    officials think is responsible for the killings on September the 11th--
    the mastermind. You could imagine my thought processes--they tell me
    they captured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed; my first question was, ``What does
    he know? Does he know anything else that we need to know?''
        And so as a result of a Supreme Court ruling, I took this bill to
    the United States Senate. The Court said, work with the Senate to set up
    a military tribunal. I felt it was important for us to give these
    killers the justice that they had denied others. But as a result of that
    bill, we also worked with the Senate to put legislation in place that
    would make it clear to our professionals that they could interrogate.
        I view this as a clarifying moment for the country, a chance for
    Republicans, Democrats, and independents to learn firsthand the
    differences of opinion we have in Washington, DC, because 70 percent of
    the people in the United States Senate who call themselves Democrat
    voted against giving our professionals the tools necessary to question
    people so we can prevent attacks. These are fine people; they're
    patriotic people; but they're wrong. They don't understand the stakes in
    the war on terror. In

    [[Page 1888]]

    order to protect America, we must stay on the offense against the enemy
    and give our professionals the tools necessary to protect you.
        It is interesting what's happened to the Democrat Party. I'm reading
    a lot of history these days, and I read about Franklin Roosevelt, who
    was strong in his confrontation of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. His
    strength of character, his vision helped set the course for victory in
    World War II--strong wartime leader. It was a Democrat, President Harry
    Truman, who confronted the rise of Soviet communism, and he set the
    course for victory in the cold war. John F. Kennedy declared America's
    commitment to, in his words, ``pay any price and bear any burden'' in
    the defense of freedom. These Presidents understood the challenges of
    their time and were willing to confront those challenges with strong
    leadership. And at the same time, they had great faith in the power of
    liberty and freedom.
        And then something began to change. In 1972, the Democrats nominated
    a Presidential candidate who declared,
    ``I don't like communism, but I don't think we have any great obligation
    to save the world from it.'' It was a--it began a slow shift of
    philosophy in the Democrat Party. A few years later, at the height of
    the cold war, a Democrat President told
    the country that America had gotten over, quote, ``inordinate fear of
    communism.'' In the mid-1980s, a Senator from Massachusetts, whom Democrats would later choose as their
    Presidential nominee, declared that Americans should, quote, ``abandon
    the kind of thinking that suggests we can gain a meaningful advantage
    over the Soviet Union in the nuclear arms race.''
        In other words, this is a different attitude. The philosophy of that
    party began to shift. Fortunately, in the 1980s, America had a
    Republican President who saw things differently. Ronald Reagan declared,
    ``My theory of the cold war is that we win and they lose.''
        By this time, the Democrat Party did not share his optimism or his
    strategy for victory. See, they'd gotten to the point where they didn't
    think that we could win. Many of their leaders fought the Reagan defense
    buildup; they fought his strategic defense initiative; they opposed the
    liberation of Grenada; they didn't like America's support for freedom
    fighters resisting Soviet puppet regimes; they heaped scorn on him; they
    mocked him when he called the Soviet Union an ``evil empire.'' Despite
    all the opposition that the President faced from the Democrats, he
    didn't waver. He stood for what he believed, and history will remember
    Ronald Reagan as the man who brought down the Soviet Union and won the
    cold war.
        And now we're involved in what I have called the great ideological
    struggle of the 21st century. It's a struggle between the forces of
    liberty and the forces of a tyrannical vision that does not believe in
    freedom. It's a struggle between moderates who want to live in peace in
    the Middle East and extremists and radicals who will use murder to
    achieve their objective.
        This is going to be a long struggle, but in order to prevail, it
    requires perseverance and determination and a strong belief in the power
    of liberty to conquer the ideology of hate. The Democrat Party that has
    evolved from one that was confident in its capacity to help deal with
    the problems of the world to one that is doubting today still has an
    approach of doubt and defeat. They believe that the war in Iraq is a
    diversion from the war on terror. I believe the war in Iraq is a central
    part in defeating the terrorists, in order that we protect ourselves.
        If you don't believe me and if the citizens of our country don't
    believe me, then they ought to at least listen to Usama bin Laden--[laughter]--and the number-two man in Al Qaida,
    Mr. Zawahiri, both of whom have made it
    perfectly clear that Iraq is a central part of their strategy to
    establish their caliphate. They believe America

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    is weak, and it's just a matter of time before we will lose our nerve
    and abandon that young democracy in the heart of the Middle East. That's
    what they firmly believe, and they have said so and stated it clearly.
        The same Democrats that doubt and don't believe this is a part of
    the war on terror also argue that we should pull out our troops before
    the job is done. The person I ran against for President said there ought
    to be a date certain for withdrawal. That means it doesn't matter what's
    happening on the ground; it just means, get out. You've had a leader in
    the House say, ``Well, the best way to deal with this is to put our
    troops on an island some 5,000 miles away from Iraq.'' There's all kinds
    of difference of opinions, but none of them are, ``Let's do the hard
    work necessary to secure America.''
        We have a difference of opinion. And that's why I have said that the
    Democrat Party, the party that--where some leaders have said we
    shouldn't spend another dime on Iraq; others have said, get out now;
    others said, get out in a couple of months. That's why they are the
    party of cut-and-run.
        It's a difference of opinion, but it's a fundamental issue in this
    campaign. The voters out there need to ask the question, which political
    party will support the brave men and women who wear our uniform when
    they do their job of protecting America? Which political party is
    willing to give our professionals the tools necessary to protect the
    American people? Which political party has a strategy for victory in
    this war on terror?
        Listen, I fully understand it's a tough fight in Iraq. I know it,
    you know it, and our troops know it. Last week--or earlier this week, I
    spoke with the Prime Minister of Iraq, Prime
    Minister Maliki, and we discussed the violence in his country. I told
    him I was amazed at how tough the Iraqis are when it comes to violence.
    Think about that. They haven't abandoned their hopes for a government
    of, by, and for the people; 12 million people voted; they still long to
    live in a free society. Yet they're putting up with unspeakable
    violence.
        There's a reason why the violence is increasing. One reason is that
    our forces, coalition and Iraqi forces, are focused on operations to
    bring security in Baghdad. In other words, we're on the move. We're
    confronting those who would like to sow sectarian violence. We're
    confronting the criminals who are taking advantage of the situation.
    We're confronting the militias who are harming innocent people. We're
    operating in some of the city's most violent neighborhoods to disrupt
    and bring to justice Al Qaida and IED makers and death squad leaders.
    We're engaging the enemies, and they're putting up a tough fight.
        Another reason why is the terrorists are trying to influence public
    opinion around the world and right here in the United States. They carry
    video cameras, film their atrocities, e-mail images and video clips to
    Middle Eastern cable networks like Al Jazeera and opinion leaders
    throughout the West. They operate web sites where they say their goal is
    to, quote, ``carry out a media war that is parallel to the military
    war.''
        Our goal in Iraq is clear, and it's unchanging: a country that can
    sustain itself, a country that can govern itself, a country that can
    defend itself, and a country which will be an ally in the war against
    these extremists. Our strategy is threefold: to help rebuild that
    country, to help the political process move forward, and to help the
    Iraqis stand up security forces that are capable of defeating the enemy
    themselves.
        Our tactics are constantly changing. I talk to our generals who are
    in charge of these operations, and my message to them is, whatever you
    need, we'll give you; and whatever tactics you think work on the ground,
    you put in place. Our goal hasn't changed, but the tactics are
    constantly adjusting to an enemy which is brutal and violent.

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        My message to the United States of America is, victory in Iraq is
    vital for the security of a generation of Americans who are coming up.
    And so we will stay in Iraq, we will fight in Iraq, and we will win in
    Iraq. [Applause]
        All right. Thank you. Sit down now. Thank you. I'm not through yet.
    [Laughter] I'm almost through. [Laughter] The waiter is signaling to me,
    you know, giving me one of these things. [Laughter]
        I want to tell you one other thing we believe in, and I believe it's
    a difference between the philosophies of our parties--is that I believe
    in the power of liberty to transform regions and countries and yield the
    peace we want. That's what I believe. I believe this is an ideological
    struggle, and the way you defeat an ideology of hate is with an ideology
    of hope. I believe in the universality of freedom. I believe there's an
    Almighty, and I believe a great gift of that Almighty to every man,
    woman, and child on the Earth is freedom.
        I believe people--I believe America should never condemn anybody to
    a society that does not embrace freedom. I believe in freedom so much
    that I wasn't surprised when 12 million people defied car bombers and
    said, ``I want to be free.'' And I believe free societies yield the
    peace we want.
        A story that I share all the time with people is the story about my
    relationship with the Prime Minister of
    Japan--former Prime Minister now, Prime Minister Koizumi. You might
    remember, the Prime Minister and I went down to Elvis's place--
    [laughter]--in Memphis, Tennessee. I went down there because I'd never
    been. [Laughter] He went down there--and asked me to take him down there
    because he liked Elvis. [Laughter]
        But I wanted to tell a story to the American people. You see, my
    dad fought the Japanese. They were the
    sworn enemy of the United States. And many of your relatives did the
    same thing. They attacked us; we responded with the full force and might
    of the United States. Kids signed up; many didn't come home. They
    volunteered to fight for our freedom, just like the kids are doing
    today, volunteering to fight for our freedom.
        One of them was an 18-year-old Navy fighter pilot. I find it really interesting that his son was on Air
    Force One with the Prime Minister of the former enemy talking about the peace. See, going down to Memphis
    from Washington, we didn't spend a lot of time analyzing Elvis's songs.
    [Laughter] We talked about North Korea and how Japan and the United
    States could work together to convince the leader of North Korea to give up his nuclear weapons ambitions. We talked
    about the fact that Japan had 1,000 troops in Iraq.
        See, Prime Minister Koizumi knows what
    I know, that when you find a young democracy that's battling against
    extremists, it's in our interests to help that young democracy succeed.
    It's in the interests of not only this generation, who has got the
    charge of protecting ourselves from terrorists, but from future
    generations, to help democracies flourish. He understands what I know,
    that the reason we're talking about the peace is because something
    happened between World War II, when Japan was the sworn enemy of the
    United States, and 2006, when they're flying from Washington to Memphis
    on Air Force One. And what happened was, Japan adopted a Japanese-style
    democracy.
        The lesson is, liberty has the capacity to change an enemy into an
    ally. And someday American Presidents will be sitting down with duly
    elected leaders from the Middle East talking about keeping the peace,
    and a generation of Americans will be better off for it.
        Thank you for your help. God bless.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:53 a.m. at the Mayflower Hotel. In his
    remarks, he referred to Usama bin Laden, leader of the Al Qaida
    terrorist organization; and Chairman Kim Jong Il of North Korea.

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