US President George W. Bush suggested on Friday that history would vindicate his decision to invade Iraq, saying he believed that a half century from now it will be regarded as important a transition for the world as the democratization of Japan was after World War II.
"I'm absolutely convinced that some day, 50 or 60 years from now, an American president will be speaking to an audience saying, thank goodness a generation of Americans rose to the challenge and helped people be liberated from tyranny," Bush said.
"Democracy spread and the world is more peaceful for it," he added.
PHOTO: AFP
He spoke at a fundraiser here expected to raise about US$1 million for Representative Mark Kennedy, a Republican running for a US Senate in a state Bush lost in two presidential elections.
In a luncheon speech to a ballroom full Kennedy's supporters, Bush repeated many of the arguments he has made in the past two weeks about the importance of winning the battle for Iraq and with it, he insists, the greater Middle East.
"We have got a strategy for victory and we'll see that strategy through," he said, drawing on lines from his recent policy speeches on Iraq.
"We will defeat the terrorists in Iraq. We will not let al-Qaeda take a stronghold -- get a stronghold in Iraq. We'll help this country develop a democracy, which will send a powerful signal to people in Damascus and Tehran," he said.
During last year's campaign, Bush often spoke of his friendship with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, remarking that a bitter enemy that former president George Bush fought against in World War II has become a close friend and ally. He expanded on the theme during his recent trip in Asia, with Koizumi at his side, and used it again today to argue that history would prove him right in deciding to invade Iraq.
"Something happened between the time that my dad and your relatives signed up in World War II and I'm talking peace with Koizumi," he said.
"And what happened was Japan became a democracy," he said.
Many outside experts and even some of Bush's own aides question his reliance on the comparison, noting that Japan was a unified state before World War II, but that Iraq has always been divided along religious and regional lines.
"It may sound too simple, but this is a comparison the president believes in deeply," one of his senior aides said last month when Bush was in Asia, declining to be quoted by name because he was discussing the president's thinking.
"It's the argument he knows his presidency will be judged by," the aide said.
Casualties
Meanwhile, a US soldier was killed and 11 others were wounded in a suicide car bomb attack against a unit in western Baghdad, the US military said yesterday.
The attack, which also wounded an Iraqi civilian, occurred on Friday in the Abu Ghraib district, the US military said in a statement.
The identity of the soldier who was killed was not released pending notification of his family.
The soldiers had been manning a static security position at the time of the attack, said Master Sergeant David Abrams of Task Force Baghdad. Most of the wounded had superficial injuries, while one soldier was evacuated to Germany for medical treatment, he said.
As of yesterday, at least 2,137 members of the US military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. At least 1,676 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers. The figures include five military civilians.
The AP count is one lower than the Defense Department's tally, last updated at 1pm on Friday.
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