The global promotion of democracy has emerged, according to the Bush Administration, as the defining mission of contemporary American foreign policy. Speaking in lofty and eloquent tones in his second Inaugural Address, Bush insisted that it would henceforth be "the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world."
Insisting that "America's vital interests and deepest beliefs are now one", the president claims that the expansion of freedom is the imperative of America's security, indispensable to the survival of liberty at home and the achievement of world peace. The deepest source of the vulnerability revealed on 9/11 is that "whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny--prone to ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder." So long as that is the case, "violence will gather, and multiply in destructive power, and cross the most defended borders, and raise a mortal threat." Only one force can break the trend, the president avers, and that is human freedom.
