Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.
Mr. Speaker, the world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve, we desire no conquests, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind.
These were the words of President Woodrow Wilson in his war message to Congress April 2, 1917.
This week, from Los Angeles to New York, from Fairbanks to Fort Lauderdale, and in 200 million households in between, a Nation struggles to come to grips with the most vicious attack on unarmed civilians in the Nation's history.
We once again appreciate, with the force that sometimes only tragedy brings home, that we are one country. Differences of geography, language, income and ethnicity have faded away. There are no national divides, no partisan debates, no hometown rivalries, no baseball strikes, not on this day. For all too brief a time, we are simply Americans.
And we are taking stock. Much has taken place since September 11, a date that may surpass the end of the last millennium as a turning point for the country.
Some of that change has been extraordinarily positive for our own security and for the peace and prosperity of the world. The promise of mutually assured destruction that for decades we exchanged with the Soviets has been replaced with an unprecedented partnership with Russia. This is no detente, but a completely new realignment of interests, which has transformed the world landscape and dramatically reduced the possibility of nuclear catastrophe.
For all that has changed in the last year and all that has transformed since the end of the Cold War, we are still at risk. Our most immediate and tangible threat comes not from interlocking engagements with a Europe that cannot overcome its historic feuding, not from nation states that are amassing colossal military forces with an eye towards territorial aggrandizement or world domination. The threat is primarily asymmetrical now, from stateless terrorist organizations and the nations that support them; from murderous psychopaths that are bent on igniting a holy war and have a blood lust for the United States. Such depravity has always existed, but with the advent of weapons of mass destruction and their terrible availability, it no longer takes a national miscalculation to inflict misery on the world. And as the lone superpower in the world, America has a target on her back.
The threat may come from new quarters, but we have one powerful bond with Americans from the beginning of the last century: This conflict is still about making the world safe for democracy.
On September 11 we were not attacked because we sought to conquer or subjugate another people. We were not attacked over a territorial dispute or a clash of national ideologies. And, notwithstanding post-attack propaganda from the terrorists, we were not attacked over our policy in the Middle East. Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda never showed an interest in the Palestinian cause except in a post-attack effort to point their homicidal rage as a defense to the West's supposed hostility to Islam. We were attacked simply because we existed, simply because we represented and continue to represent the triumph of free institutions, a respect for the free exercise of religion, association, and expression. We were attacked because we are a democracy in a world very unsafe for democracies. And winning this war, and the long twilight struggle it has become, will require nothing less than a sustained, unswerving commitment to the propagation of freedoms around the world.
We must root out al Qaeda and terrorist organizations wherever they exist. We must take the fight to the enemy, as the President declares, and not wait defensively at home for the next attack. At the same time, we must open a completely new front in the war on terrorism: the battle for democracy. We must attack tyranny, despotism, and the trampling of human rights around the world. We must use every instrument of our national policy to support the growth and cultivation of free institutions, a respect for the free exercise of religion, the right to associate with whom one pleases, and the right to speak one's mind. We must encourage the growth of democracies in every corner of the globe and not simply in Europe or the Americas. Democracy must come to the Arab nations, to China, and to every corner of Africa, and not simply to our adversaries. Democracy, too, must come to our allies, to the Saudis, to the Egyptians, and to the Jordanians. Democracy, not oil, will be the ultimate guarantor of our security.
This lofty ambition is not fanciful, not quaintly sympathetic, but practical. Democracies do not make needless war, democracies do not seek to terrorize or conquer, democracies do not serve as the breeding grounds for genocidal rage or terrorist madness. Democracies are better capable of eliminating the common scourges of mankind: poverty, disease, famine, and conflict. If we are to be partisans, let us be partisans of democracy.
We may never ferret out every last terrorist; the germ of madness is difficult to eradicate completely. But our peace and prosperity lie as much in changing the soil. Peace, again, must be "planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty,'' and a cardinal part of winning this war, as in the war to end all wars, will be our fortitude as one of the "champions of the rights of mankind.''