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CIAO DATE: 12/5/2006
Lessons from the First Five Years of the War - Where Do We Go from Here?
Newt Gingrich
October 2006
Abstract
AEI senior fellow Newt Gingrich delivered a version of this essay as a speech to the American Enterprise Institute on September 11, 2006.
We meet five years after the initial attack on American soil. However we should note we come together twenty-seven years after what Mark Bowden in Guests of the Ayatollah called “the first battle in America’s war with militant Islam”--the seizure of the American embassy and the 444-day hostage taking of fifty-two Americans in total violation of international law.
We have blocked further attacks on America largely because of the courage and determination of one man, President George W. Bush. As I wrote in October 2004, faced with the deliberate and horrific attacks on 9/11, President Bush instinctively understood that this was a war.
He demonstrated his courage by taking that war to al Qaeda to protect the American people. Despite opposition from confused and reluctant bureaucrats and politicians, he acted. That decision was the decisive break with the terrorism-as-a-criminal-act strategy and in direct contrast to the terrorism-as-a-nuisance mindset held by many.
Today, because of President Bush’s courage, there are no terrorist training camps in Afghanistan threatening Americans. Liberated from the Taliban, the Afghan people, for the first time in their history, freely elected their president. In a country where just a few short years ago women had no civil rights, women cast 43 percent of the votes.