Wednesday, September 19, 2001

I'm writing this letter on Wednesday, the day after the attack on America's sovereignty, so many more things will be known if and when this is printed. I don't want my anger to diffuse. I would rather my visceral reaction speak for me, because I believe it to be the right one.

My solution, when confronted with the present, is normally to look to the past, and so it was natural to look to a man who had recognized evil early, and in the face of derision from his peers, had held the line and triumphed in the end. So I reread portions of Manchester's "The Last Lion," a Biography about Winston Churchill. I quickly came to the lines I was looking for on page 433: "But that is how he saw life, as a struggle between the forces of light and the powers of darkness. He never tried to hide it, or veil it, or hoodwink or mystify or dupe his audiences. It was an authentic view of life; there is no need to justify it."

A few pages later, Manchester describes a dinner Churchill shared with Walter Lippmann, who recounted to Churchill his afternoon with the (prewar) Nazi sympathizer Joseph Kennedy. Kennedy had left the impression with Lippmann that war was inevitable, and that Britain would lose. Churchill's reply: "It may be true, it may well be true...that this country will at the outset of this coming, and to my mind almost inevitable war be exposed to dire peril and fierce ordeals. It may be true that steel and fire will rain down upon us day and night scattering death and destruction far and wide. It may be true that our sea communications will be imperiled and our food supplies placed in jeopardy.

"Yet these trials and disasters, I ask you to believe me, Mr Lippmann, will serve but to steel the resolution of the British people and to enhance our will for victory. No, the Ambassador should not have spoken so, Mr Lippmann: he should not have said that dreadful word. Yet supposing as I do not for one moment suppose that Mr Kennedy were correct in his tragic utterance, then I for one would willingly lay down my life in combat, rather than, in fear of defeat, surrender to the menaces of these most sinister men.

"It will then be for you, for the Americans, to preserve and maintain the great heritage of the English-speaking peoples. It will be for you to think imperially, which means to think always of something higher and more vast than one's own national interests. Nor should I die happy in the great struggle which I see before me, were I not convinced that if we in this dear dear island succumb to the ferocity and might of our enemies, over there in your distant and immune continent the torch of liberty will burn untarnished and I trust and hope undismayed."

Later, after he'd become Prime Minister, and while German armored forces were driving through the Ardennes and Belgium, and the Allies seemed on the verge of defeat, he gave what has become probably his most famous speech over the BBC. He explained the situation to his nation, holding nothing back, but finished with these lines:

"Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'"

Our Nation has been attacked. Our wives, brothers, and progeny have been slaughtered in their thousands. The murderers seek to freeze us in their merciless headlights of terror and fear. If we cannot conduct our business free of angst; if we allow the replay of that stolen plane decimating our nation's business capital, to echo through our consciousness; if we make ourselves prisoners of ourselves, then they have won.

Let us strike back in our righteous anger and lay waste to the terrorists, and those who harbored them. Where reason has failed, let fear and uncertainty reign among our enemies. Innocents will die in this struggle that we didn't start but most assuredly, must finish. Make no mistake, our survival as an economic power depends on our bracing ourselves to our duties and seeing this thing through.

Some good Americans will counsel moderation. I don't believe they are unpatriotic, they are just wrong. Our allies are already supporting us, and we appreciate their empathy. But it was we who were attacked, and we shouldn't be shackled in our response. Any and every weapon in the arsenal should be considered, and we should formally declare war before their use.

As for the few people dancing in the street at our misfortune, to paraphrase Shakespeare: Their jest will savor but of shallow wit, when thousands weep more, than did laugh at it.

Timothy J. Parker

Peachtree City

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