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Politics : America Under Siege: The End of Innocence -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elmer Flugum who wrote (18403)	9/9/2002 1:18:13 PM
From: calgal	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 27666

Gettysburg? Wrong Address. The speech America needs, but won't hear, a year after Sept. 11. URL: opinionjournal.com BY BRENDAN MINITER Monday, September 9, 2002 12:01 a.m. EDT On Wednesday New York's Gov. George Pataki and Mayor Michael Bloomberg will walk onto the biggest public stage of their lives. Their audience will be in the millions, tuning in from around the globe. The moment to which they will be speaking is fraught with emotion and already seared into the minds of their countrymen. In short, it is the time for the twice-elected governor and the new mayor to stand before us all and give the speech of their lives. But Messrs. Pataki and Bloomberg won't be giving their own speeches at all. Instead, both will turn to politicians of the past for words more eloquent than theirs. The mayor will read FDR's Four Freedoms speech, while the governor will read Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. Both speeches rightfully belong in the annals of the world's greatest political orations. Yet Messrs. Pataki and Bloomberg are making a mistake by simply rereading them. Instead, they ought to tap into what makes a speech great. They should make vivid today's struggle and how it must be waged. They should define the moment. Each generation must redefine its struggle, rise against the forces of evil and articulate why the good must triumph. Lincoln himself understood this. He began his famous speech "Four score and seven years ago," to tie his colossal struggle to save the Union to the revolution that created it. His message was that the cause remained the same--to fight for the freedom of man--even if the battlefields had changed. President Bush understands this. He immediately identified al Qaeda's ultimate target, freedom. From the beginning, he has insisted on calling evil by its name. This moral clarity gives him both an understanding of where he stands in history and the proper perspective to articulate the emotions so many Americans feel. Despite the stereotype that he is inarticulate, Mr. Bush has spoken--often off the cuff--some of the most memorable words over the past year. "I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you, and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon," he told the firemen crawling over the rubble at Ground Zero three days after the attack. Rudy Giuliani understands this too. In the months after the attack, he sometimes seemed to even eclipse the president. In only a few simple words, spoken straight from the heart, Mr. Giuliani turned away a $10 million check from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. The prince had toured Ground Zero and blamed U.S. policy for the devastation. "There is no moral equivalent for this attack," Mr. Giuliani admonished the prince in turning away the money. "The people who did it lost any right to ask for justification. . . . Not only are [Alwaleed's] statements wrong, they're part of the problem." The first anniversary of the terrorist attacks calls for something not yet spoken with memorable clarity. There must be a defense of the American way of life that enlarges the view in which we see the struggle, while also focusing the average American's intensity for waging it. The moment is ripe for connecting how Americans live to the struggle against tyranny and chaos. That means defending American commerce, prosperity and generosity. American ingenuity hasn't been limited to political advancements in human freedom. The sanctity of a contract, the right to be free to innovate and prosper and other economic freedoms supports every other form of progress. The United States is the only nation that can defeat Iraq without an international coalition, as Vice President Dick Cheney reiterated on "Meet the Press" yesterday. And America can do that without making drastic sacrifices at home. This feat is possible only because America is an economic superpower, thanks to our free system of commerce. Our prosperity makes it possible for us to rebuild the countries we must conquer. The freedom to pursue knowledge creates innovations that can help solve the world's problems--by curing diseases, feeding the hungry and finding ways to construct democratic institutions in autocratic societies. In these fields and others, American know-how leads the world. America beats terrorism every day by remaining a free country, by adhering to the rule of law, by exercising our freedoms to advance politically, culturally and economically. Al Qaeda struck Americans while they worked--while they engaged in the sort of creative endeavor that makes America a noble and great nation, a beacon for all the world. President Bush has already laid the groundwork for this message. In front of Congress, at the National Cathedral and during the State of the Union and elsewhere, Mr. Bush has captured where the nation stood, how it must cope and where it must go--into the nations that harbor terrorists. All that's left is for someone to articulate why what we do as individuals matters in this struggle. Gov. Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg are being given a platform to do that. But the nation will have to wait a day, and hear what President Bush has to say when he addresses the United Nations. Mr. Miniter is assistant editor of OpinionJournal.com. His column appears Mondays.