Bush may follow his father's footsteps in Hawai'i
By John Griffin
Former editorial page editor for The Advertiser
Nearly 10 years ago then-President George H.W. Bush was at Pearl Harbor for the 50th anniversary of the Japanese attack. I have been thinking about that in relation to what's called our new war.
Advertiser library photo • Sept. 20, 2001
The elder Bush made a series of speeches that day, maybe the emotional best of his presidency. Most memorable was when he, as a Pacific war combat veteran, told the Pearl Harbor attack survivors that he bore no rancor against the Japanese, that it was time not to forget but to forgive.
President Bush has shown an emotionally powerful side of himself since Sept. 11, in a way that is reminiscent of his father during the Gulf War a decade ago.
As I recall sitting with an audience on a dock near the then-visiting battleship USS Missouri, Bush also made references to the post-Cold War and post-Gulf War era. He spoke of a New World Order where America could and should lead.
So it seemed at the time as well as later. And that remained so even if national economic problems led to Bush's defeat in the 1992 election.
Given our current trauma and continuing uncertainties, it seems unlikely his son, President George W. Bush, will be here for this year's 60th anniversary of the Dec. 7 attack.
But the young president might be here before then. He is even scheduled to make a speech on the Missouri, now permanently berthed by the sunken USS Arizona with its entombed Americans.
The White House last week said Bush is still planning to make the Oct. 17-21 meeting of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Shanghai.
Our changed world may have turned several more times by then. It's hard to imagine Bush away from Washington for the planned 10 days, with stops in Tokyo, Seoul and Beijing, as well as Honolulu en route home on Oct. 25.
Still, while ineffectual APEC is hardly a forum to fight terrorism, it offers a chance to rally key regional leaders, maybe improve ties with host China, and to show that American business as usual includes economic development for all.
So we'll see whether the "new" President Bush stands on the deck of the Missouri — a symbol of final victory as the nearby Arizona evokes early defeat and sacrifice — to report on his trip and perhaps proclaim some amended world order.
In any event, Sept. 11 showed Americans a new face of war where even any modest "victory" is far over the horizon. Terrorism has been around for centuries and has been in the news from the Mideast, Ireland and Oklahoma City, to name a few. Now it has been taken to new heights and depths.
President Bush and others are admirably right in stressing how we must not blame Arabs and Muslims, that we must not make this a kind of holy war against a religion with more than a billion peaceful followers. Such a war is what the enemy wants.
That enemy for now is a well-organized, skilled and hidden fringe group of zealots who warp Islam to their own violent ends. They must be fought with determination, skill, concern for civil rights, and sometimes means Americans find distasteful.
That's an awesome combination. And yet it is not that simple either.
For, while many things American are admired and envied in the world, it does not follow that others — not just the haters but many moderates — want to be like us or to follow our lead in every cause.
To me this relates to the struggle between two forces at work in the world, forces I have previously called localism and globalism. On these pages last Sunday, international relations professor Ronald Steel referred to "the war of the traditionalists against the modernizers."
Globalism, a mixture of great promise and many problems, may be the current wave of the future. But the deeper answer lies in kinds of compromise and adjustment between localism and globalism.
That means avoiding homogenization and keeping the best of pluralism while promoting world cooperation with better promise for all peoples.
Americans must keep that kind of goal in mind, even as we go off to fight an enemy with far different values.
It would be a bonus if APEC, with Bush on hand, reiterated such a goal, and if he brought the message back to Pearl Harbor.
