If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs …
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it…
Rudyard Kipling
Trying Times
When the going gets tough, the tough get going. These are hard times for our nation. The going is tough. We are confronted by enemies who are and will prove difficult to subdue.
But defeat them we will, if we hold true to form. Ours is a nation which faces adversity, not burying her head in the sand and hoping that our problems will somehow, miraculously disappear. We know better. Our common sense tells us so.
Yes we squabble. The best ideas come to the top that way. But let us not forget in the process the purpose of argumentation, and that we care about one another, indeed we need one another.
We as a nation have fought a lot of wars together over the years, and we have won most of them because at the end of the day, we have kept our level heads.
It is prudent and worthwhile to remind ourselves of who we are as we fight this war on terrorism. We will disagree on methods, but the fact is, there are real enemies out there, and given that we value our American way of life, we have to do as we have always done: we stand together against our foes.
The war on terrorism is going to be a protracted one. It is going to take years, it does not stop in Afghanistan and Iraq. Further, we must accept the fact that it probably will get a lot worse before it gets better. If we don’t accept the worst, then we are not prepared to deal with it when it comes. That is not America; we are strong and we are winners.
Former secretary of state under Ronald Reagan, George Schultz, spoke with Wall Street Journal deputy editorial page editor Daniel Henninger recently on the reality of global terrorism, stating: “The law-enforcement mentality is not going to do the job for us. You have to have a war mentality. You have to have an offense and defense; you have to be active about it.
“You show me a union that will never strike, and I’ll show you a union that isn’t going to get anywhere. You show me a management that will never take a strike, and I’ll show you a management that’s going to get pushed around.”
Of course we hate to see soldiers die. Did prior generations of Americans lose soldiers without shedding tears?…and they lost them not by the tens and hundreds, but by the tens and hundreds of thousands. But they did not shrink from the task; they did not lose their nerve.
As Americans, our path of independence and strength has been set by our founding fathers. Then as now, following their example, we are not a people who stand down when threatened. Let us argue. Let us squabble. Let us disagree. But in the end, let us stand as one against our foes. That is the way that we have always defeated them, and that is the way that we will defeat them now.
Art Hall, publisher
Send comments to: FromThePublisher@CapeMayCountyHerald.com
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