By John Cox
2008 Republican Presidential Candidate
Friday, July 28, 2006
The crisis in Lebanon is a manifestation of years of appeasement instead of principled confrontation against the evils of Islamic radicalism. The people of Lebanon as well as the people of Iran and Syria and other countries in the region want what you and I want — peace, freedom, opportunity and the ability to house and feed their children.
Unfortunately, there are leaders among them who are interested in cementing their own power by creating division, war and conflict. We can see that in Iran where a group of Mullahs have a tight hold on that country's oil wealth while the people have little voice.
The United States is supporting Israel's right of defense, and that is the right thing to do because every sovereign nation has the right of self-defense. I definitely believe it is incumbent upon the U.S. to use this crisis as an opportunity to demonstrate to the world that the taking of innocent human life is never appropriate. We must demonstrate to the world that the will of the people should prevail above the will of a small group of leaders bent on power seeking. That is why the effort in Iraq is so very important; to demonstrate that democracy can take hold in this region.
If the leaders of countries in the Mid-East can be removed from office by a popular vote, they will be much more heitant to engage in war making and aggressive tactics. Then maybe the entire region will be able to move forward in peace and security.
as long as power-hungry leadership is cemented in power, they will use that power to further their own ends rather than pursue the needs of the general population. We should do in the Middle East (and North Korea for that matter) what we did for the people of eastern Europe: make it clear to the people of this region that we want them to join the family of peace loving nations and to seek economic opportunity, liberty and freedom. We also need to make it clear that if the people do rebel, we will support their efforts, as Ronald Reagan did for the Eastern Europeans.
That is the bulwark of peace, not only in the Middle East but in North Korea and throughout the world. as long as the U.S. stands ready to support those principles in a consistent fashion, we will never go wrong and we will never have to worry about our place in the world. This will go a long way toward securing our own safety in the future.
John Cox is the first Republican presidential candidate to announce his bid for 2008. Send your comments to John at John@cox2008.com.
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