Roundtable with a President
by James M. Kushiner
Roundtable participants:
Sheryl Henderson Blunt (Christianity Today)
James V. Heidinger II (Good News)
Deal Hudson (Crisis)
James M. Kushiner (Touchstone)
David L. Mahsman (The Lutheran Witness and Reporter)
Richard J. Neuhaus ( First Things)
Marvin Olasky (World)
Russell Shaw (Catholic writer)
Stephen Strang (Charisma)
Early on the afternoon of May 26, 2004, after passing through a metal detector, sending my portfolio through an x-ray machine, and being wanded twice by a security guard, I entered the White House grounds and was escorted with several others into the foyer of the West Wing. Two days earlier, I and eight other Christian publishers and journalists had been invited to a meeting at the White House with the president.
After 30 minutes, we were invited into the Roosevelt Room, but asked to leave our luggage and bags outside.
War & Questions
Once inside, I admired a Nobel Peace Prize mounted on the wall, given to Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 for his role in brokering peace in the Russo-Japanese War. Teddy the Rough Rider had a reputation as a gung-ho warmonger, but the peace prize balances that out.
And TR certainly came to know the cost of war himself, and not only from his own experiences as a soldier. Losing a son in World War I left him a deeply grieving father, heart-broken and sobered by the death war brings.
After a few minutes, President Bush, our own warmongering president—if you believe the newspapers—arrived on schedule, shook everyone’s hand, and sat down across the table to tell us “a little bit” of what was on his mind. “Obviously Iraq’s on my mind,” he began. (See?)
He spoke about the difficult process of “transferring full sovereignty and freedom” and promoting democracy in Iraq, since “these are people who have lived in tyranny; they haven’t developed the habits of free people yet.” He mentioned his belief in a “clash of ideologies,” and the need to fight terrorists intent on using “the corruption of religion to suit their purposes.”
He then shifted into war rhetoric:
We will use every asset to prevent an enemy from attacking us again. . . . I will not yield to them, to their blackmail, to their murder, to the fear they try to cause through death.
James M. Kushiner is the Director of Publications for The Fellowship of St. James and the former Executive Editor of Touchstone.
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more from the online archives
22.3—April 2009
Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by J. Daryl Charles
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
