The Home Front: A speech by Senator Tom McClintock

Lodi, California

We had planned to gather here for a political event, to discuss the pressing issues facing state government. But now there is a far greater issue facing civilization.

Did you all see the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt as it left port this morning? It is one of at least four U.S. carrier battlegroups that will soon be engaging the enemy. It reminded me of the story of the man who took his six year old son to the memorial to the U.S.S. Arizona at Pearl Harbor many years ago - searching for a name among the 2,400 Americans killed in that sneak attack. As they stood there, the little boy looked up at his father and said, "Daddy, why did the Japanese attack us like that?" The father thought a moment and replied, "Son, I don't know. But it was a big mistake."

In many ways, the attack of September 11 was far more serious than Pearl Harbor. More than twice as many Americans have been killed. It was an attack not upon (what was then) a remote and distant territory, but rather upon our greatest city and upon our capital city. It was an attack not upon heavily armed warships, but upon utterly defenseless American citizens peacefully going about their business.

It is true that the Japanese used marked warplanes in their sneak attack - but there appears no doubt which terrorist organizations attacked America on September 11, and what states stand behind those organizations. This is not an unknown enemy - just a particularly despicable one.

The morning after Pearl Harbor, we didn't vow to bring the Japanese pilots to justice. We didn't fret that a vast ocean and treacherous atolls protected Japan and would make a war difficult to fight. We didn't worry about offending the sensibilities of neutral nations. We didn't lecture upon the difference between Japanese aggression and the peaceful teachings of Buddha. We waged war, and we continued to wage war until the other side could make war no longer.

And I have every confidence that this nation and its leaders have every bit of the determination to do so again, in response to a far greater attack upon our nation, our people and our freedoms.

This atrocity sets new records in the annals of recorded history for ruthlessness and barbarity and depravity. Binyamin Netanyahu called it a "wake-up call from hell," and indeed it is.

And that's where I believe all of this horror and death and sacrifice might well have been a blessing in one respect.

Before September 11, I think most of us had viewed terrorists as far-away fanatics and the governments that supported them as international nuisances. Years of left-wing policies had dismantled our intelligence agencies. Our military was ransacked. Provocation after provocation went virtually unchallenged.

Meanwhile, these terrorist powers were growing in sophistication and size and reach and deadliness. As we have slept, they have been actively developing - and may be very close to acquiring - chemical and biological capabilities. They are supported by nations that are themselves close to achieving nuclear capabilities. And is there anyone in this country who now doubts that these powers have the depravity, the ruthlessness and the competence to use them against us the moment they have been acquired?

If this had been a truck bomb that had killed two dozen, it would have been forgotten by next week. Thus, in one important respect, there was a blessing in all of this. Those many thousands of Americans did not die in vain. Their screams awakened our nation to the mortal peril that it had been blindly approaching - blindly, that is, until September 11.

As we mourn, we also vow never to forget those thousands of our fellow citizens who awakened the camp as they fell.
The issue before us is not about vengeance for our murdered countrymen. It is not about bringing anybody to justice. It is not about teaching anybody a lesson. It is about destroying an enemy that has the will - and will soon have the means - to destroy civilization. Unless we stop them.

And that is now the imperative of our generation.

I've heard it said that this is a shadowy and elusive enemy - like none we have ever faced before. I don't believe that. I don't believe it is any more shadowy or elusive than the fifth columns that we fought during World War II. Here at home, we waged war against the German Bund and the Irish Republican Army, and against an elaborate network of enemy spies and saboteurs in many countries, while we also waged war against the governments that sponsored them.

And remember this: like Pearl Harbor, the only reason they succeeded on September 11th was because they were not resisted. And the moment they were resisted, they crumbled.

The heroes of Flight 93 now take their place in American history along side Colonel Travis at the Alamo and General McAuliffe at Bastogne and Molly Pitcher at Monmouth. And their message to us is very simple: stand up to these bastards. Centuries from now, Americans will proudly remember the story of the young men aboard that aircraft as it headed for our nation's Capitol: how they responded instantly to duty and honor and country -- and armed only with their bare hands stopped cold those who would destroy our nation. In his last words heard over his cellular phone, Todd Beamer was heard to ask - not just of his fellow heroes, but of all of his fellow countrymen: "Are you guys ready? Let's roll."

We have been warned to expect a protracted struggle - with perhaps many battles to be fought upon our own soil. In this respect, Winston Churchill offers us counsel through his words to the students of Harrow school in the Autumn of 1941, after whole sections of London had been leveled by Nazi bombs:

"…We must learn to be equally good at what is short and sharp and what is long and tough. It is generally said that the British are often better at the last. They do not expect to move from crisis to crisis; they do not always expect that each day will bring up some noble chance of war; but when they very slowly make up their minds that the thing has to be done and the job put through and finished, then, even if it takes months - if it takes years - they do it…

"You cannot tell from appearances how things will go. Sometimes imagination makes things out far worse than they are… But for everyone, surely, what we have gone through in this period… this is the lesson: never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never, never - in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense."

Then he went on to say, "Do not let us speak of darker days; let us speak rather of sterner days. These are not dark days; these are great days - the greatest our country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of
us according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race."

And so let it be with each of us. We are the home front. And that means that every citizen, acting at every station of private
and public affairs, shoulders a responsibility that is equal to every man and woman in uniform. We don't share the same peril, but we surely share the same responsibility.

What that means in practical terms for our public policy at home is that all the issues we have fought for in the past, which were merely important, now become imperative.

The cutting edge of our defense is comprised of our armed forces. But those armed forces depend directly upon the industry, technology and materiel that we produce here at home. The regulations that have hamstrung our industry must be removed. The wasteful spending that has sapped our capital must be stopped. The vast oil resources beneath the arctic tundra must be made available.

Our wartime industries will require record amounts of electricity at a time when our capacity is sorely strained. In addition, transmission bottlenecks must be remedied, not only for desperately needed capacity but also for the security that comes with redundancy. Three months ago, unknown foreign sources breached the computer systems that control our electricity flow with devastating implications that were never taken seriously. We must now take them very seriously.

The outset of hostilities coincides with an economic recession, compounding the challenges we must surmount. Without removing the barriers to production that have been erected, we cannot produce the high level of support that our military will need in the months and perhaps years ahead.

We enter this war at a time when state spending already consumes a larger percentage of our gross state product than it ever did at the height of World War II. We cannot sustain a war effort and an economic recession and rampant government waste. There must be a dramatic reordering of priorities toward defense at the federal level and toward industrial and technological infrastructure and law enforcement at the state and local levels.

In times like these, waste itself becomes a powerful and dangerous enemy that saps our ability to rebuild and defend our nation.

Furthermore, we have to recognize that we face a fifth column in this country that is well organized, pervasive and deadly. As a wartime necessity we must be prepared for security measures we would never tolerate in peacetime. It is reasonable to believe that active terrorist cells are deeply rooted here in California, with designs for future attacks, and law enforcement must be given every means to eradicate them. In a sense our state must be on neighborhood watch. In addition, the wisdom of maintaining a well-armed citizenry should now be abundantly clear, beginning with the flight crews on our airliners.
Concealed weapons permits must be readily available to all who may be called upon unexpectedly to confront future terrorist attacks.

Infiltration across our borders, which we have tolerated in peacetime, must be closely attended. Those who come to work and prosper in our country should be welcomed as always, but the background and intention of all who enter our borders can no longer be ignored.

And one other thing: we must focus added attention on our schools, particularly upon who is teaching our children and what they are teaching. The American founding principles that are now under such vicious attack from abroad must be reverently defended at home; they must be inculcated and habituated into the hearts and minds of every young American; and the cost of defending those principles must be clearly understood.

I know that these are major changes in the way we have conducted our affairs at every level of government for the past forty years. And I know there are still some who view this as an over-reaction to a single day of terror. So let me reiterate why the singular objective of our entire nation must be the utter annihilation of the individuals, groups and governments that are responsible for these atrocities.

No power in the recorded history of the world has displayed the level of utter barbarity that was behind the attacks of September 11. Last year, they were armed with car bombs. Last week, they were armed with commercial jetliners. Soon they will be armed with anthrax, nerve gas and perhaps even nuclear devices. And that is why no American can rest until every one of them has been purged and blasted from the face of the earth, and every one of their infected footprints have been scraped and cleansed from the garden of civilization.