NEWS ANALYSIS
Bush Invokes Truman in Promoting Global Strategy
Foreign policy overhaul strikes a chord with voters. Critics say vision falls short of reality.
By Ronald Brownstein, Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON — President Bush, in his drive to rebuild support for the war in Iraq, appears to have drafted an unlikely ally: Harry S. Truman.
As he frames the nation's foreign policy debate in sweeping terms, Bush is arguing that like President Truman after World War II, he is restructuring America's national security strategy to meet a transcendent new threat.
In his speech last week accepting the Republican presidential nomination, Bush compared his effort to democratize Iraq to Truman's commitment to building a democratic Germany after World War II.
Administration officials and conservative intellectuals also have asserted that Bush's responses to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — such as his emphasis on preemptive action against potential threats to the U.S. — represented the most fundamental rethinking of American foreign policy goals and tactics since Truman's era....
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Democrats consider it outrageous for Bush to reach for Truman's mantle, given the strains the Iraq war and other White House decisions have placed on the system of collective security Truman helped to construct....
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-assess8sep08,1,3327565.story?coll=la-home-politics