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THE GATHERING STORM OF THE 21ST CENTURY |
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Written by Rick Santorum
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Thursday, 16 November 2006 |
[Senator Rick Santorum delivered this speech on October
30, 2006. The Hate America Left was
desperate to defeat him for re-election and they succeeded, more proof that
they really are on the side of Osama Bin Laden. ---JW]
This summer I gave two speeches that defined the unique challenges that
confront the United States as we conduct a new world war. I gave those
speeches - one in Washington at the National Press Club, and one here in
Pennsylvania at the Pennsylvania Press Club - because I believe that now more
than ever we need to study the past, learn from events, and take proactive
measures to protect our freedoms at home and provide a safer world in which to
exercise those freedoms.
I am here again today talking about this issue because Islamic Fascism
continues to rear its ugly head. And because it is being joined by
others, becoming a hydra.
The war is at our doorsteps, and it is fueled, figuratively and literally, by
Islamic Fascism, nurtured and bred in Iran.
Islamic terrorists planned a mass kidnapping at the Central Synagogue in Prague
just a few weeks ago. They intended to carry it out on Rosh Hashanah, when
large numbers of Jews would be celebrating the New Year. Once the world's
attention was focused on Prague, they intended to make impossible demands, and
then blow up the synagogue and all within.
Those people were not marked for death because they supported the war in Iraq,
or supported George W. Bush, or sent troops to Afghanistan. They were targeted
because they were guilty of being Jews. This is evil.
Islamic terrorists organized an assault on civilian aircraft leaving London,
planning to blow up many planes over the North Atlantic. Two of the
participants, a husband and wife, intended to take their six-month old baby on
a plane with them, and blow him up along with everyone else on board. This is
evil.
Islamic terrorists slaughter innocent Iraqi citizens every day. A man in
Baghdad recently called his daughter in America to say that "once upon a
time, garbage trucks went through the streets to collect refuse. Now they
collect beheaded bodies."
Our enemies celebrate these massacres. They use videos of
beheadings to recruit new members to their ranks. In recent days, they beheaded
an Orthodox priest and crucified a teen-age boy, both guilty of Christianity.
This is evil.
Somalia's interim president has appealed for international help in dealing with
a powerful Islamist movement that now controls all of southern and central
Somalia, a country of enormous strategic importance in guaranteeing oil
shipping in the Gulf.
The State Department concurs that the risk is very real,
especially because Osama bin Laden listed Somalia as a target in al Qaeda's war
against the West. Our Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs says
that "Somalia is a safe haven for terrorists...."
Kuwait has just uncovered an Iranian-created network of sleeper cells trained
in espionage and sabotage. Many of them were trained in Iran itself and then
infiltrated into the Shi'ite community of Kuwait, which is about half the
population;
How many Americans realize that Iran declared war on us 27 years ago - in 1979
- and has been killing Americans ever since?
Most everybody has heard by now that Iranian President Ahmadinejad has denied
the Holocaust and called for Israel to be wiped off the face of the earth. But
that's only the beginning of his mission.
He continued with a rhetorical question: "Is it
possible for us to witness a world without America and Zionism?" He
answered himself: "But you had best know that this slogan and this goal
are attainable, and surely can be achieved."
He is only the latest in a series of Iranian leaders who have vowed death to us
and visited death upon us. Our troops in Iraq are killed by Iranian weapons
paid for with Iranian money, smuggled into Iraq by Iranian logistics, and
utilized by Iranian-trained terrorists.
A couple of years ago you needed a security clearance to
know this. Today it is common knowledge. Iran is the centerpiece of the assault
against us and the other countries in the civilized world, which is why I
fought so hard for passage of the Iran
Freedom and Support Act.
I fought for it, and, after years of opposition from the Democrats, some of my
own colleagues, the State Department and even the White House, it is now signed
into law by President Bush (September 30, 2006).
I fought for it because I do not want my children to suffer through devastating
attacks on American soil, and to risk their own lives in the battle against
those who brazenly tell us they are planning to destroy what they call
Anglo-Saxon civilization - and we call freedom.
This is an unpopular war. I have been ridiculed by the media and my
opponents for defining the enemy as Islamic Fascism - they say words don't
matter. But words do matter because words are what define the enemy we
confront. Words are needed for Americans to comprehend what motivates the
deeds that the enemy is planning, so we can effectively defeat them. And
defeat them we must.
Ahmadinejad has recruited and is training 52,000 suicide terrorists called the
Commando of Voluntary Martyrs. An Iranian Revolutionary Guard intelligence
officer bragged that "We have a strategy drawn up for the destruction of
Anglo-Saxon civilization and for the uprooting of the Americans and English ...
There are 29 sensitive sites in the U.S. and the West. We have already
spied on these sites and we know how we are going to attack them."
Our growing challenge, however, is that Iran is not alone in its rhetoric,
intent or capacity to threaten the security of the U.S.
It is important for Americans to know that the threat is more
complex, and has grown more complex. The enemy that has to be named
is greater than Islamic Fascism.
Just last month, in advance of the meeting of the U.N. General Assembly, Iran,
Syria, North Korea and more than 100 other nations met in Cuba to discuss a
push to broaden the world's definition of terrorism to include the "U.S.
occupation" of Iraq and the "Israeli invasion" of Lebanon.
Participating countries drafted a declaration condemning
Israel but made no comments about Hezbollah's missile attacks on Israel.
Following this meeting of the non-aligned movement, I introduced a Senate
resolution that expressed concern relating to the threatening behavior of the
Islamic Republic of Iran and the ideological alliance that exists between the
countries of Cuba and Venezuela.
We must support the people of Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela in
the quest to achieve a truly democratic form of government.
North Korea's nuclear test made it clear that it threat is not made of mere
words. They are now intensifying real military confrontation. When
the U.N. resolution condemned the nuclear test, North Korea called it "a
declaration of a war" and threatened the United States: "we will
deliver merciless blows without hesitation to whoever tries to breach our
sovereignty and right to survive under the excuse of carrying out the U.N.
Security Council resolution."
North Korea, the world's leading missile proliferator, and Iran are on the
verge of starting nuclear arms races in both Asia and the Middle East - both
hubs of terrorist networks that reach around the world - which could easily
result in nuclear material, perhaps even a weapon, ending up in the hands of a
terrorist organization.
But it's not just terrorist organizations we should fear. Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who denies the holocaust and called Israel just last week
"illegitimate" and "could not survive," said he plans on
using "the technical factor" to augment "national
security."
Ahmadinejad , like Hitler and Mussolini, intends to conquer the world.
This is not a hidden agenda. His goal is to establish a Caliphate. Like
Khrushchev, he wants a nuclear arsenal, and he is building the same sort of
frightening global alliances that enabled the Soviet Union to put missiles near
us.
Look again at the Iranians' strategy. A couple of months ago Ahmadinejad signed
a mutual defense pact with his pal, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Two
dictators, awash in petrodollars, and besotted with hatred for the United
States.
President Chavez, who called President Bush "a devil" at the
podium of the U.N., spoke to the applause of those in attendance as he decried
America. Calling America an "imperialist power," he says his
ambition is to become leader of global alliance of nations to "radically
oppose the violent pressure that the (American) empire exercises."
This summer Chavez honored Ahmadinejad at a gala and plans
to visit North Korea, at which an "oil-for-missiles deal" may be on
the agenda.
The same North Korea that has been building nuclear weapons to put on missiles
that can reach our soil.
Did you know that Venezuela is the leading buyer of arms and military equipment
in the world today? Did you know that Chavez is building an army of more than a
million soldiers and the most potent air force in South America - the largest
Spanish-speaking armed force in history?
Did you know that Venezuela will shortly spend thirty billion dollars to build
twenty military bases in neighboring Bolivia, which will dominate the borders
with Chile, Peru, Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil? The bases will be commanded
by Venezuelan and Cuban officers.
This is what the brilliant Carlos Alberto Montaner - a
survivor of Castro's bloody regime - calls "a delirious vision of
history," and it is driven by a new alliance of dictators from Iran, Cuba
and Venezuela.
It is part of the grand design so proudly announced by Ahmadinejad: the
destruction of our civilization.
And the sad irony is, we are dependent on the very people who hate us.
American imports 60% of the oil we need to fuel our economy. We are
underwriting their efforts to undermine us.
Venezuela is our fourth largest supplier of oil. President Chavez called
oil "a geopolitical weapon" and said "I could easily order the
closing of the refineries that we have in the United States. I could
easily sell the oil that we sell to the United States to other countries of the
world ... to real friends and allies like China."
A recent Congressional report found that Hezbollah may, right now, have
established bases in Venezuela, a country which has issued thousands of visas
to people from places like Cuba and the Middle East, possibly giving them
passports to evade U.S. border security.
To make matters worse, Cuba and China, with help from Venezuela, are together
exploring and drilling for oil only 50 miles off the US coast. 50 miles
off our coast. In an interview on Al-Jazeera, Chavez said working with
Cuba is an example of how they will "use oil in our war against
neoliberalism."
Radical environmentalists and my opponent [Democrat Bob Casey] won't let us
drill 100 miles off our coast, but dictators who hate us are drilling for
American oil just 50 miles offshore. Does this make any sense?
And my opponent is sleepwalking into the gathering storm, siding with the left
to ban drilling off our coast and banning oil drilling in an area in Alaska no
bigger than the Philadelphia airport.
If we really understood the threat at hand, we would not be fighting with one
hand tied behind our backs.
We have forgotten our history. We have been here before.
We only entered the First World War after German U-boats sank American civilian
and commercial ships on the North Atlantic. World War I was "the war to
end war," and with the defeat of the German armies, it seemed that peace
was destined to last a long time.
But it did not last even one generation. It did not last
because we failed to recognize the evil of fascism, and because we allowed the
fascists to grow stronger and stronger, until they felt capable of defeating
us.
We left Great Britain alone to face the Nazis for several years, and
despite Mussolini's entrance, we only engaged in the Second World War
after the devastating Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Germany, Italy and
Japan. They had nothing in common, so we weren't willing to see the axis
of evil gathering around us.
We entered the Cold War only after Stalin's aggression in the Middle East and
Greece. In every case the evil was obvious, the threat indisputable, but the
willingness to confront was in every case late and prohibitively costly.
Are we willing to see the storm gathering around us and
act before it is too late? Was 9-11 not enough? Have our memories
faded? Or will it take something even more devastating?
When Winston Churchill wrote his great history of the Second World War, he
began the first volume-"The Gathering Storm"- with a short
description: "How the English-speaking peoples through their unwisdom,
carelessness, and good nature allowed the wicked to rearm."
We were part of that moment of folly, and we paid a terrible price for it on
the battlefields of that war. We are running the same risk today, and we are
again acting carelessly, unwisely and we are permitting the wicked to grow
stronger and stronger.
Just as we refused to recognize we were at war with a great evil, the European
fascists and Japanese imperialists in the late nineteen thirties, so today we
shrink from the recognition that we are once again under attack from evil
forces - Islamic fascists led by Iran, and the Socialist and Communist rulers
of Venezuela and North Korea.
Ahmadinejad is often treated as if he were a stand-up comedian on a late night
TV show, some wacko character from far away who really doesn't affect us. This
is a way of avoiding the life and death challenge of the war.
We have seen it before. Hitler and Mussolini were also ridiculed - the house
painter with the funny moustache, and the bald guy with the fat neck - until
the bombs fell in Hawaii and hundreds of thousands of Americans
died.
Nikita Khrushchev was ridiculed as a peasant who pounded
his shoe on the table at the United Nations, until Soviet nuclear missiles
showed up in Cuba, less than a hundred miles from our shores. Then we realized
he wasn't so funny.
This is not funny business.
Many Americans are sleepwalking, just as they did before the world wars of
the last century. They pretend it is not happening, that it all has to do
with the errors of a single American administration, even of a single American
president.
Some even pretend that it will all go away if only the
Democrat Party is elected in November.
How do they propose to save us from these people? By negotiating at the United
Nations? By removing U.N. Ambassador John Bolton office? By relocating American
forces from Iraq to Okinawa? By abandoning the Iraqi people to Iranian and
Syrian slaughter and domination? By engaging in more direct talks with a
nuclear North Korea?
No wonder Mr. Casey won't say anything about the danger from North Korea's
nuclear bombs. He can't. He has virtually nothing to say. Except he
does have something to say about preparing to defend ourselves against North
Korea.
He told the Council for a Livable World he opposes
building nuclear bunker buster weapons and would halt deployment of national
missile defense until, quote, "further research proves the system will
work."
Time for research is past. North Korea has been building nuclear weapons
to put on missiles that can reach our soil.
It's time to wake up.
Mr. Casey said that "the U.S. should not escalate the drive to place
weapons in space and should seek an international ban on such
weaponry." I hate to break the news to you, but Iran and North Korea
are already escalating things.
My opponent and the anti-war left seems more worried about the tactics we use
to catch the terrorists than about the terrorists themselves. They want
to "investigate" the NSA surveillance program that, thank God, has
allowed us to listen in on calls coming from known terrorists abroad.
I think people are indeed concerned, and they are right to be concerned.
About our enemies. Americans are concerned when they learn that ten
flights from Britain to America were targeted by Islamic fascists just last month,
and, had it not been for the British surveillance, they might have succeeded.
Let me tell you, Mr. Casey, people are concerned when Venezuela is harboring
terrorists, many of whom will penetrate our border because of the amnesty bill
you support, that puts amnesty before security.
You said you would have voted for the war, but now you say you would vote
against it. You said we weren't misled, but now you say that we were lied
to.
You are sleepwalking into a nightmare.
It's time to wake up.
From everything I can see, Mr. Casey is unready, unqualified for the high
office he seeks at a time when our survival as a free people is at stake.
He is one of many Americans sleepwalking in this nightmare. These horrors no
longer shock us as they did on 9/11. They have become part of the background
noise of our world. Some even blame our own leaders rather than the savages who
do the killing. But I believe that Pennsylvanians are awakening to this threat,
and can send a message to the nation and our enemies.
It's time to stop dreaming and start acting. We have to bring the fight
to our enemies, and that means we have to do a lot more than respond to their
attacks in Iraq. We must go after the regimes that recruit, pay, train and arm
terrorists.
I am not - NOT - talking about sending more American
troops onto foreign battlefields, or even dropping precision bombs from safe
altitudes. I am talking about political and economic warfare, to bring down the
terror regimes in Tehran and Damascus. The best way to do that is to support
their own people, most of whom are eager for freedom.
That is why I drafted legislation that commits America to support freedom in
Iran. A free Iran will be our friend, not an implacable enemy. We know that is
true, because public opinion polls taken by the regime itself show that more
than seventy percent of Iranians want to choose their own system of government
and elect their own leaders.
And we know it is true because the Iranian regime is frantically trying to
isolate the Iranian people from contact with the free world. Satellite dishes
are torn down, dissidents are arrested, tortured and executed. High speed
internet is banned. Surviving vestiges of a free press are shut down.
Those are the actions of a regime that fears its people,
and knows that the desire for freedom can destroy the Islamic Fascist tyranny.
A free Iran will change the world, because it will deprive the terrorists of
their single greatest source of support, and isolate the likes of Hugo Chavez
and Kim Jong Il. Why is a free Iran and Iraq so essential? Because the
United States nor any western country will be able on its own to defeat radical
Islamic fascism.
We must create an environment where moderate Islam -
whether Sunni or Shi'ia or any other strain - combats and suppresses its
radical elements. I believe the best way to accomplish this is through
democratic self rule.
And although Iran is at the center of this Islamic Fascist mosaic, our
engagement must be focused closer to home as well.
Just as we have seen our neighbors' economies grow as well as our own - we need
to work diligently to forge free trade agreements with other countries, as we
have seen impressive results with free trade agreements in Israel, Canada,
Mexico, Jordan, Singapore, Chile, Australia, Bahrain, and Morocco.
Our current partnerships with these countries account for
more than $900 billion in two-way trade, which is about 36 percent of total
U.S. trade with the world. U.S. exports with FTA partner countries are
growing twice as fast as U.S. exports to countries that do not have agreements
with the U.S.
As Chavez works to create an anti-American alliance, we have to be even more
diligent in protecting our homeland.
We should support immediate programmatic additions to U.S. missile defenses in
order to carry out critical national security objectives. I agree with
Congressman Duncan Hunter, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, that
we should be capable of addressing the "full range of North Korean missile-based
threats to the United States, our deployed forces, and our allies."
We must also pursue energy security. Alongside the political pressure on the
Iranians and their allies, we must also stop funding Iran and Venezuela, which
is what happens whenever we buy a barrel of their oil. We need to use our own
energy resources more effectively, and we must find other fuels.
This is why I have fought, again, against the administration, for funding for a
coal-to liquid-fuels plant here in Pennsylvania to both clean up the
environment and make us more energy secure. $100 million dollars, here in
our own state, to pioneer our way to independence.
That is why I wrote the Empower America Act, which calls for investments of
more than $20 billion for research and development, loan guarantees, and grants
to create, produce and distribute renewable fuels, cleaner coal, and nuclear
energy. It extends tax incentives for the production of renewable energy and
alternative fuels, and also for hybrid vehicles.
One of my opponent's favorite talking points is that "we can't drill
ourselves out of our energy dependence."
Let me say to Mr. Casey, and his sound bite driven sleepwalking colleagues; the
gathering storm demands it. We have no choice. Our men and women in
uniform are laboring, sacrificing and dying to protect our homeland, we have no
choice. We have no choice but to explore every form of American energy
that can make use independent and secure.
We are drilling 3700 wells in western Pennsylvania,
including one of the sites of next year's U.S. Open Golf Tournament, and you,
Mr. Casey, won't allow less than 1000 wells over 25 years, in a place no one
lives?
My bill permits environmentally sensitive production of our own energy
resources on the outer continental shelf and on the coastal plain of ANWR. And
it encourages the construction of new refineries and expands existing ones,
along with biorefineries and additional coal-to-liquid facilities to meet our
current needs for motor fuels and enables us to grow in the future.
There are many other things that need to be done in this war, but none of them
will happen unless we come to grips with the terrible fact that we are at war,
it came to us and it will be with us for some time.
There is no way to escape it, no matter what our policies,
and whoever our elected representatives are. There is no escape because our
enemies are fully committed to our destruction, and they will not stop until
they have either destroyed us, or have been destroyed.
That is our choice: we can win or lose, but we cannot opt out walk away from
the greatest threat and most resistant threat this country has ever faced.
That is why I have spent so much time talking about the war during this
campaign. It is why I have fought heart and soul to pass legislation that will
hurt our enemies and strengthen our country.
If you reelect me, I will press ahead with all my strength
and passion, and you will know that you have a United States Senator who sees
the world as it is and will fight for our security - rather than repeat slogans
written for him by consultants.
This is not a time for politicians who think the world stops at the Delaware
River.
Osama bin Laden said "In the final phase of the ongoing struggle, the
world of the infidels was divided between two superpowers: the United States
and the Soviet Union. Now we have defeated and destroyed the more
difficult and the more dangerous of the two. Dealing with the pampered
and effeminate Americans will be easy."
Let me tell you. With the right leadership, he's got a surprise
ahead. It won't be easy at all. It is a time for leadership to
confront the gathering storm, and to defend the people of this state and this
nation against terrible enemies. The stakes are too high to sleepwalk. I
hope you will join me in this fight. And God bless America.
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