Alliance for Bush to issue welcome to US President

national | anti-war / imperialism | press release

Thursday June 24, 2004 20:00

by Bush'04 - Alliance for Bush

DUBLIN, 23/06/04: The Irish Alliance for Bush, an umbrella group comprising several organisations sympathetic to the policies of the US President, announced this evening that it Plans to deliver a letter of Welcome to the US President, Mr. Bush to the United States Embassy in Ballsbridge at 5pm on Friday, June 25th.

Alliance for Bush (AFB), believes that it is in Ireland’s interests to extend a Warm Welcome to the President when he arrives on Friday, and that even were it not so, the President deserves to be welcomed as a friend of Ireland and a friend of Europe.

Consequently, AFB will be publishing an open letter welcoming Mr. Bush, and delivering it to a representative of the American Government in Ireland.

Since coming to power, Mr. Bush has had to grapple with the gravest threat to the American way of Life since US soldiers gave their lives on the beaches of Normandy 60 years ago. He has tackled hard issues with a drive and single-minded determination that has won him many admirers, but also many enemies.

AFB commends the President on the tough decision he made in March 2003 to invade Iraq and begin the process of bringing Freedom and democracy to the residents of the Middle East, who have for years suffered at the hands of unelected dictators, sometimes, regretably, with US backing.

The President, in 2000, saw what many who consider themselves his intellectual superior, failed to see, - that if 9/11 had a root cause, it was that the Arab world is covered in regimes that grow fat off the west, while denying their people’s the benefit of trade, and then blaming the West for their own corruption. - He alone recognised that hearts and minds could not be changed by words, because words do not reach the ears of those governed by a government determined to resist the advance of Freedom.

President Bush has been criticised for invading Iraq. This weekend, thousands will greet him with a hatred not seen in this country since the worst days of the Northern Irish troubles. When met with a similar outburst of irrational hate in London last year, Mr. Bush insightfully remarked that the freedom to express dissent is the greatest Freedom of all. “May the people who protest my visit”, he stated, “never have to suffer a government that denies them that right”.

Iraq has not as yet turned out as many of us who supported its liberation hoped that it would. The torture of Abu Ghraib is seared indelibly on the minds of all who had hoped for a better day. But the terror of that Prison under the US must only serve to remind us what unimaginable abuse went on in it’s soulless heart during the reign of “President” Hussein. AFB commends President Bush on his decision finally to destroy that monument to tyranny, and hopes that this is the beginning, finally, of a better day for the people of Iraq.

President Bush is by no means above reproach, and the right to protest his visit is the hallmark of a free society. But this does not make the protests right. While Thousands hurl abuse at the leader of the Free world in Shannon, in towns and cities across the country, others sit, their jobs dependant on US companies, their mortgages and daily standard of living resting on decisions made not here, but in the boardrooms of the US’s powerhouse economy. AFB has noted with concern the reference to Mr. Bush as a “menace” by David Begg, President of ICTU. IS this the message this country wants to send to its biggest inward investor? AFB says no.

President George W. Bush is the leader of a nation that has been nothing but a friend to this country. Further, he is a President who should be commended, rather than chided, for taking tough decisions that will make the world a safer and better place to live. In our view, he deserves to be greeted with the best of Irish hospitality, and to this end, we will be writing to him to express that hospitality on behalf of the significant number of Irish People who support the President and his agenda.

ENDS