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PoliticsOL.com Editorial - Week of September 16, 2001
U.S. to the World:
We Will Eliminate the Plague of International Terrorism - Either Stand With Us or Get the Hell Out of Our Way
One of the more emotional scenes of this week's tragic events came when President George W. Bush visited the New York site where the World Trade Center once stood. When a rescue worker shouted that he couldn't hear the President, Bush responded that he could hear him, "And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear from all of us soon." To that, hundreds of exhausted firefighters, rescue workers, police officers and others began chanting, "U-S-A. U-S-A. U-S-A."
This was not just a bellicose statement coming from a national leader. Bush was speaking for the vast majority of Americans - a country united in a way not seen since December 7, 1941. Just as Japanese military leaders then miscalculated the American will to fight, so have the bands of international terrorists and their state sponsors now.
There'll be no lobbing a few Tomahawk missiles at deserted tents in some Central Asian desert this time. And if Iraq or some other state sponsor is found to be behind last Tuesday's attacks, there will be no half-measures this time either, no stopping short of wiping such nations clean of their political and military leadership, just as was done to the Fascists a half-century ago. The American public has made it clear that they'll settle for nothing less.
While many government officials were in a state shock in the few hours after the World Trade Center towers collapsed, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) already held a firm grip on the sense of the country, telling Judy Woodruff of CNN that the attacks were "an act of war" and our response needed to be as such.
Although some Members of Congress initially held back from such characterizations that day, including Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE), most quickly changed their minds. Throughout the Congressional debates authorizing the President to use force, one by one, Members of Congress stood up and described the attacks in the same tone as McCain had, including some of the most liberal Members of Congress, such as Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA). Why? Not just because the calls their offices began receiving from seething constituents demanded it. But because the enormity of what had happened began to sink in. They truly felt the pain, anguish and anger - that was crossing the country from coast to coast - themselves.
As the President began building an international coalition to combat global terrorism, Secretary of State Colin Powell has been making it clear to foreign leaders that they are either with us or against us. Many of the world's leaders recognize the growing dangers of international terrorism, that the game has changed dramatically and the stakes are now much higher now. Any of them could have just as well been the nation targeted for such a brazen assault.
For the nations that worry the United States may in their estimation, "overreact", here's a somber thought for them: They'd had better worry much more about what the U.S. response will certainly be to a terrorist attack that uses weapons of mass destruction against America if this insidious evil isn't wiped clean now.
For the pacifists in our own country, the great majority of Americans say to them that we are simply not willing to die for their notion of peace. For as President Woodrow Wilson said in his war message of 1917:
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 or violated. The wrongs against which we now array ourselves are no common wrongs; they cut to the very roots of human life. ...
We are at the beginning of an age in which it will be insisted that the same standards of conduct and of responsibility for wrong done shall be observed among nations and their governments that are observed among the individual citizens of civilized states. ...
It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war... But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts... 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 itself at last free.
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