No Country Left Behind

President Bush stood at the apogee of his life Thursday, and he rose to the occasion. A small man (in our view), who became president through accident of birth and corruption of democracy, he has been legitimized by reelection, empowered by his party's control of all three branches of government and enlarged by history (in the form of 9/11). His second inaugural address was that of a large man indeed, eloquently weaving the big themes of his presidency and his life into a coherent philosophy and a bold vision of how he wants this country to spend the next four years.

To summarize: Having won the Cold War, the United States was on "sabbatical." Then, on the "day of fire" -- Sept. 11, 2001 -- America learns that it is vulnerable. The "deepest source" of our vulnerability is that "whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny." Therefore, "the survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands." Furthermore, all people are entitled to liberty because "they bear the image of the maker of heaven and Earth."

And "it is the policy of the United States" to promote democracy "in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world."

Every president talks about America's sacred mission of promoting freedom, and Thursday's speech was peppered with caveats. But from the speech itself and the official spin around it, we are clearly supposed to understand that Bush means something new and more ambitious. And even -- or especially -- Bush's critics have learned to respect his determination to do what he says he'll do, however much it may contradict the advice of those critics, or reality.

We take this president at his word. And the words are startling.

Bush's counterpoint of freedom and tyranny sounds like Ronald Reagan's, but the underlying analysis is much more radical. The threat to the United States, in Bush's formulation, comes not from the tyrants themselves but from the victims of their tyranny, who are radicalized by oppression and turn their hatred toward these shores. During the Cold War, the United States often supported or promoted tyrannical regimes, as long as they were anti-communist. This was realpolitik--the cynical, Machiavellian approach adopted by presidents since Harry S. Truman signed off on the policy of containing communism.