Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History (34 page)

So if there are any reporters in the room tonight, I’d like to have a word with you after the speech….

This thrilling era of global change—of peaceful democratic revolutions following the sudden collapse of Soviet totalitarianism labeled by President Bush the “Revolution of 1989”—was anticipated by Churchill over four decades ago.

But more than that, I believe his postwar leadership helped lay the foundation for the policies of deterrence and strength that culminated in today’s historic events….

Far from being a “warmonger,” Churchill was in fact the earliest advocate of “peace through strength.” He spent ten lonely years determined to inform the British people about the growing threat of Nazi rearmament and aggression and repeatedly challenged the government’s policies of appeasement and weakness.

He openly disputed the government’s figures on the balance between British and German military strength.

He insistently demanded the creation of a ministry to supply munitions.

He bluntly asked whether Britain was doing all it could to defend democracy.

“We must recognize that we have a great treasure to guard,” Churchill said two years before Munich. “The inheritance in our possession represents the prolonged achievement of the centuries…. There is not one of our simple uncounted rights today for which better men than we are have not died on the scaffold or the battlefield. We have not only a great treasure; we have a great cause.”

The tragedy of Munich marked the turning point for Great Britain and for Winston Churchill’s political future.

The policies of weakness and appeasement followed by Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin, and Neville Chamberlain failed.

The Nazis marched through Czechoslovakia, Poland, Scandinavia, the Low Countries, and rolled through France to the very gates of Paris in just forty days. Malevolent eyes turned on Britain.

In this dark hour, a desperate Britain summoned Churchill to lead the nation into war. The Wilderness Years were over. The battle of France had ended. The Battle of Britain had begun.

Now in charge of the entire scene, Churchill recorded that he “slept soundly and had no need for cheering dreams.”

“I felt as if I were walking with Destiny,” he said, “and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial…. I was sure I would not fail.”

Three weeks into Churchill’s government—while British forces were evacuating at Dunkirk—Mussolini offered to mediate between Britain and Germany. Germany would get France and the Continent; Britain would get independence—to be assured by Hitler.

Many in the war cabinet favored opening talks. They believed Britain could win better terms before the attack that was sure to come. Churchill was vehemently opposed.

When the meeting was opened to the entire cabinet, Churchill gave an impassioned speech. His wrath grew with every word, words that poured forth relentlessly, hurled down like thunderbolts.

“Nations which went down fighting rose again,” he told his ministers, “but those which surrender tamely are finished.”

The stunned cabinet erupted in applause.

In a few minutes of powerful reasoning, Churchill turned uncertainty into resolve, apprehension into determination, fear into hope—and, with it, a near defeat into an eventual triumph.

Ladies and gentlemen,
that
is what great leadership is all about!…

Listen to his words as war threatened to engulf the British Isles and fear had displaced hope. Sir Winston said, “These are not dark days: these are great days—the greatest days 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.”

What was it that ultimately sustained him over six long decades of public life in triumph and in tragedy—in the first World Crisis, following the Dardanelles, throughout the Wilderness Years, during the War Years, after his defeat in 1945?

President Kennedy talked of his courage; Field Marshal Montgomery spoke of his domination; President Eisenhower said it was his defiance;
Lord Beaverbrook mentioned his ambition; President Reagan credited his optimism; Clement Attlee called it luck.

Yes, all these attributes marked the essential character of Winston Churchill. But in the end, I believe the anchor of his being was a profound faith in the overpowering force of ideas. Not just any ideas—Churchill’s was a deeply held commitment to freedom and democracy, ideas which ennoble the long story of Britain, ideas extending from the Magna Carta to the birth of America’s declaration “that all men are created equal,” ideas which he believed were an eternal promise to transform the world for men and women everywhere.

From statesmen of Churchill’s rank, lessons can be learned that apply to nearly every political situation. What can we learn from him in our new post-Cold War era?

There is a debate raging on the right, where most interesting debates now take place: How involved should the U.S. be in the world now that the Soviet empire is shrinking and aggression is waning? What should our stance be in a post-Cold War world that is unipolar rather than bipolar or multipolar?

Some want to turn inward since there are no great threats to our national security. Some say, “Come home, America!”

Others believe we must continue an activist, forward-based strategy of spreading the global democratic imperative of freedom and opportunity for all; and that spreading democracy and entrepreneurial capitalism is a
moral
as well as a political necessity….

Only a few months ago, probably about as many people had heard of Kuwait, or knew where it is on a map, as had heard in 1935 of Abyssinia or knew where it was. Churchill, still out of power, saw Mussolini moving into Abyssinia. With typical foresight, he asked, “Who is to say what will come of it in a year, or two, or three… with Germany arming at breakneck speed, England lost in a pacifist dream, France corrupt and torn by dissension, America remote and indifferent…?”

The Western democracies did nothing to stop Mussolini in Abyssinia; Ethiopia fell; then Hitler took the Rhineland; the
Anschluss
followed—then the Sudetenland, then Prague, then Poland, and Pearl Harbor. The world, supposedly liberated from global threats only twenty years before, once again plunged into war.

I believe President Reagan, President Bush, Prime Minister Thatcher, and others in the West learned Churchill’s lesson. We know what will follow if the world does nothing to reverse Saddam Hussein’s aggression in Kuwait. Saudi Arabia will be next, and the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Jordan, and then the only democracy of the Middle East, Israel.
With Hussein asserting hegemony over all the Persian Gulf, the world might be at war yet a third time.

In the early 1930s, Hitler and Mussolini were far more dangerous than the clownish dictators portrayed by Charlie Chaplin. And… Saddam Hussein is far more than a two-bit tyrant or Third World expansionist.

He is armed with chemical weapons. He has already waged a ten-year war of aggression that cost one million lives. He will have nuclear weapons in the not too distant future. Not only must we stop Hussein—we must break his sword!

Those who think that conservatism only meant anticommunism only know half the story. America must do more than just stand
against
something. America’s mission is to stand
for
something, to be that “city on a hill,” as President Reagan said.

When the American colonies broke away from Britain, Jefferson, Adams, and the founders published the immortal Declaration of Independence. Isn’t it remarkable that they did not begin with what they were against? The Declaration’s story begins by stating what America is
for
: we are
for
the idea that all men are created equal. We are
for
the natural rights of all human beings. We are
for
government by consent of the governed.

America’s mission to the world did not end when communism ended. Our mission is ongoing. It was recognized by Sir Winston in his “Iron Curtain” speech, inscribed in the very words on this wonderful award. Our mission is to continue to tell the world that we are
for
the freedom and human rights of all men and women, for all time—and to do everything we can to transform the ancient dream and hope of freedom into a democratic reality everywhere! And with God’s help, we will.

Sometimes an occasion makes a speech. Boris Yeltsin, long treated by Western leaders and media as a buffoon for his heckling of Mikhail Gorbachev’s “half-measures” of reform, surged to prominence atop a tank resisting a coup attempt by Communist hard-liners. During that abortive military-KGB putsch in August of 1991, three young Russians were killed in the popular resistance; to capitalize on the emotion of the moment, and to rally opinion to pulverize the still-entrenched Communist apparat, a state funeral was held and nationally telecast; religious leaders conducted services, further identifying the reformers with the pre-Communist culture (including prayers in rarely heard Hebrew, because one of the dead heroes, Ilya Krichevsky, was a Jew).

Gorbachev, on that August 24, announced to the crowd that he had decreed that the three dead men would be declared heroes of the Soviet Union, a central entity he was eager to save, and referred to the coup plotters only with “They won’t be pardoned.” Yeltsin spoke ten times of Russia, and used a powerful figure of speech to describe the fallen-out coup leaders: “like cockroaches in a bottle, trying to eat each other.” Gorbachev began his speech, “Dear Muscovites!” Yeltsin began more somberly and personally:

***

DEAR RELATIVES AND
loved ones of Dmitri Komar, Vladimir Usov, and Ilya Krichevsky, dear fellow countrymen and Muscovites:

Today many millions of Muscovites, the whole of Russia, are parting with our heroes, with our defenders, with our saviors. Of course, we are not parting with their names forever, because from now on their names are sacred names for Russia, for all the people of our long-suffering Russia.

When television and radio reported about the coup on Monday, the hearts of millions and millions of mothers and fathers trembled most of all because they were scared for their children. Because it was young people, it was our children, who more than anyone else rushed to defend Russia’s honor, its freedom, its independence, and its democracy, to defend its parliament.

Yes, from now on, this square, on which a battle raged for three days, on which tens of thousands of Muscovites kept vigil, will be called the Square of Free Russia.

The enemy is cruel and, of course, bloodthirsty, especially when he knows that if he loses no one will take him in. All the participants, all the main participants of the putsch, are arrested. Criminal proceedings have been started against them, and I am sure that they will be made to answer for everything.

But even today, how cynical the words of arrested [the former head of the KGB, Vladimir A.] Kryuchkov sound, the man who yesterday said that if he could do it over again he would have started a little faster and more energetically, and that the most important thing was to behead Russia.

This entire plot, and we must understand this very clearly, was aimed in the first place against Russia, its parliament, its government, its president. But all of Russia stood up to its defense: Moscow, Leningrad, the Urals, the Far East, the Kuzbass, practically all regions of the republic, although there were some regions which immediately put up banners and slogans expressing loyalty to the Extraordinary Committee. These officials already have been dismissed from their posts. And the prosecutor’s office is considering their cases.

But we cannot resurrect those who died at the walls of our White House. We pay tribute to their courage, those who have become Heroes of the Soviet Union in death. I bow down to the mothers and fathers of Dmitri, Volodya, and Ilya, and I express to them my deep condolences, and to all their relatives and loved ones. Forgive me, your president, that I could not defend, could not save your sons.

In this day of Russia’s national mourning, we, of course, need to strengthen our unity to energetically act further. We have cleared ourselves a path. Our deceased heroes have helped us to do so. This is a difficult day for us, a hard day. But it could have been even worse, because the enemies are already like cockroaches in a bottle, trying to eat each other. They are pointing fingers at each other, asking who played a more important role in the plot, revealing to each other the lists of people they wanted to kill first, second, third, fourth.

Only the first twelve victims in these lists were designated to be killed at 6
P.M
. on August 19 during the storming of the House of Soviets. So it was not in vain the Muscovites were here, defending the honor of Russia.

It was a difficult loss, and the memory of it will be with us forever. For that reason, our heroes, sleep peacefully and let the earth be soft for you.

Badly wounded as an Army Lieutenant in World War II, Bob Dole rose from years in a hospital bed to become a Kansas congressman, Republican national chairman, Senate majority leader, and three-time candidate for national office.

Over the years, his speaking style changed: Dole was known in the sixties for a mordant wit, which sometimes backfired: at the start of the Nixon campaign of 1972, he referred to the Committee to Reelect the President by its acronym CREEP, an innocuous crack that gained a sinister second meaning after the stealthy Watergate break-in. In a 1976 debate with Walter Mondale, Dole as Republican vice-presidential nominee struck viewers as an embittered man with his denunciation of “Democrat wars,” and in the aftermath of a primary loss in New Hampshire to George Bush in 1988, the defeated candidate lashed back
with an admonition to Bush to “stop lying about my record.” That became known as “the old Dole.”