I want to post a speech given by President Woodrow Wilson back in 1917, which sent the United States to battle in World War I. The speech is amazing, and has a very appropriate for the war we are currently fighting against terrorism. Wilson was a visionary when it came to foreign policy. Maybe with the exception of FDR and JFK, he is that last Democrat to oversee a successful policy on the worlds stage. Im going to take out any reference to Germany in the speech and add the words terrorism, so you can relate it to today. With those few changes, you will be able to really see how ahead of his time Wilson truly was. I wish President Bush could give a speech like this. Anyways, please read this and enjoy it.
The present terrorist actions against [our interests] is a warfare against all mankind. It is war against all nations...The challenge is to all mankind.
Each nation must decide for itself how it will meet it. The choice we make for ourselves must be made with the moderation of councel and temperateness of judgement befitting our character and our motives as a nation. We must put excited feeling away. Our motive will not be revenge or the victorious assertion of the physical might of the nation, but only the vindication of right, of human right, of which we are only a single champion.
...Armed neutrality is ineffectual enough at best; in such circumstances and in the face of such pretensions it is worse that ineffectual; it is likely only to produce what it was meant to prevent; it is practically certain to draw us into [a] war without either the rights or the effectiveness of belligerents. There is one choice we cannot make, we are incapable of making: we will not choose the path of submission and suffer the most sacred rights of our nation and our people to be ignored and violated. The wrongs against which we now array ourselves are no common wrongs: they cut to the very roots of human life.
With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical character of the step I am taking...I advise that the Congress declare the recent course of the terrorists to be in fact nothing less that war against the government and people of the United States; that it formally accept the status of belligerent which has thus been thrust upon it; and that it take immediate steps not only to put the country in a more thorough state of defense but also to exert all its power and employ all its resources to bring the terrorists to terms and end the war.
...We should keep constantly in mind the wisdoms of interfering as little as possible in our own preperation and in the equipment of our own military forces with the duty -- for it will be a very practical duty -- of supplying the nations already at war with terrorism with the materials which they can obtain only from us or by our assistance. They are in the field and we should help them in every way to be effective there.
...While we do these things, these deeply momentous things, let us be very clear, and make very clear to all the world what our motives and our objects are...Our object...is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power and to set up amongst the really free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and of action as will henceforth ensure the observance of those principles.
...A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations. No autocratic government could be trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants. It must be a league of honor, a partnership of opinion.
..The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon and tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve.
We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall cheerfully make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them.
...It is a distressing and oppresive duty, Gentlemen of the Congress, which I have performed in thus addressing you. There are, it may be, many months of fiery trial and sacrifice ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance.
But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest to our hearts, for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world at last free.
To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other.
We once again, now in the year 2006, find ourselves thrusted into a monumental struggle of survival and sacrifice. Woodrow Wilson understood the threat his world faced, but he didnt become weakened by dissenters. Wilson knew what had to be done, even if it costed American lives and spilled American blood, because freedom itself depended on it. The past can always teach us valuble lessons as long as we are patient enough and willing to seek its wisdom. Lets learn from our mistakes and benefit from our triumphs. Let us be emboldened by our track record of victories through the ages, and let us have the power, both physically and spiritually, to see this new struggle to an ending beneficial to the entire free world. If we do this, we will undoubtedly prevail.
-Brad
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