COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - President Bush, linking the wars of his tenure to the deadliest one in history, is asking the country to commit anew to postwar rebuilding.
In an address for Wednesday to more than 1,000 graduates of the U.S. Air Force Academy, Bush frames their futures by drawing back to the World War II generation. He links the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to postwar Germany and Japan six decades ago.
"America has assumed this obligation before," Bush said in prepared remarks released by the White House. "After World War II we helped Germany and Japan build free societies and strong economies. These efforts took time and patience, and as a result Germany and Japan grew in freedom and prosperity and are now allies of the United States."
The result, Bush says, was "generations of security and peace" in the United States.
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