What President Bush Should Say Tonight

(Washington, D.C.): George W. Bush will give what may be the most important speech of his life tonight before a joint session of Congress and, via television and radio, a truly global audience. It will be that and, more importantly, a touchstone for rallying the American people and those of other countries in the war thrust upon us if he makes the following points:

• This is war. A congressional declaration to that effect should be enacted both as tangible evidence of our determination and to ensure that the President has the unambiguous authority to prosecute the war to a successful conclusion.
  
  
• It is a war against terrorism, those who inflict it upon the civilized world and those who help them do it. We will not make common cause with such people or those who abet them. We will, instead, be working to disrupt, attack and destroy the terrorist networks and their sponsors, including where necessary, inducing regime change as the only sure means of ending the menace they pose to us all.
  
  
• In this connection, we will call upon the resources and capabilities of the government and people of Israel. Sadly, the Jewish State has had vast and painful experience with terrorism. Its intelligence about the threats posed by terrorists — particularly those who rationalize their lethal actions on the basis of a perverse theory of Islamic supremacism — is second to none. We are indebted to Israel for early warning she provided us about the attacks that occurred on September 11th; it is regrettable we were unable to use that information to prevent last week’s bloodshed. We are resolved, however, to emulate Israel’s effective use of military and other techniques to root out and eliminate terrorists before they can strike.
• The federal government will, in addition, do everything it can to ensure that our people are no longer vulnerable to the sorts of attacks we suffered last week — and to those, far more deadly attacks that might be in the offing involving weapons of mass destruction that might be delivered by ballistic missiles or other means. This Administration will use every tool at its disposal to ensure that the resources and latitude needed to develop and deploy missile defenses are made available.

  Doing so will require us to withdraw from the obsolete and increasingly dangerous 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and I am formally serving notice tonight that we will take that step six-months from today, as we are allowed to do pursuant to the Treaty’s own Article XV.

  I am also putting on notice any Member of Congress who seeks to impede our efforts to protect the American people against missile attack, as well as truck bombs, plane hijackings, etc.: I will do everything in my power to ensure that such obstructionism fails and that those responsible for it are held fully accountable by their constituents and the American people as a whole.

• I look forward to continuing — and building upon — the sense of bipartisan unity that has been so much in evidence, and so welcome, since the 11th of September. That unity must, however, be based upon a shared commitment to defending our country and to waging the war we now confront with maximum effectiveness and success, not on the basis of backroom deals aimed at reducing such differences as persist to lowest-common-denominator outcomes that fall far short of the policies, funding and political support our armed forces need to prevail in the conflict ahead.