From Robert Draper’s Oval Office conversation with President Bush:

The job of the president is to think strategically so that you can accomplish big objectives. As opposed to playing mini-ball. You can’t play mini-ball with the influence we have and expect there to be peace. You’ve gotta think, think BIG.

The Iranian issue is the strategic threat right now facing a generation of Americans, because Iran is promoting an extreme form of religion that is competing with another extreme form of religion. Iran’s a destabilizing force. And instability in that part of the world has deeply adverse consequences, like energy falling in the hands of extremist people that would use it to blackmail the West. And to couple all of that with a nuclear weapon, then you’ve got a dangerous situation…That’s what I mean by strategic thought.

I don’t know how you learn that. I don’t think there’s a moment where that happened to me. I really don’t. I know you’re searching for it. I know it’s difficult. I do know—y’know, how do you decide, how do you learn to decide things? When you make up your mind, and you stick by it…

Try as we might, we just can’t imagine FDR or Ronald Reagan talking like this — or Coolidge or McKinley, for that matter. Be that as it may, time will tell what will happen to the mathematical logic and calculations of the adversary.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 4th, 2007 at 7:16 am and is filed under General, Iran, Religion, Republicans, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.