Imagining Lincoln's War on Terror
President Lincoln's Address to the Nation on September 14, 2001
Our nation has suffered a grievous loss. Terror has touched our shores in a way that none could ever contemplate. Tools of human commerce and symbols of a peacable intercourse with nations across the entire face of the planet given us by the Creator have been turned to bring destruction to life and property. We have lost many thousands of our sisters and brothers in these incomprehenisble and criminal acts. In our grief, we are enraged. In our rage, we are filled with hatred for those who have harmed us. In our hatred, we are impelled to action.
And in this we face a great test, and the story of how we meet this test is yet to be told. It is a test of the principles upon which our nation was founded, and a test to see if we can hold true to those principles. Alone among the peoples of the earth, our nation was founded upon considered intent - we did not develop through natural evolution over the course of millenia, simply as a people sharing a common land and a common blood. Alone among the peoples of the earth, we forged our own history most deliberately. Our people chose to come to these shores, of many bloods and many nations. Our people chose to settle in a wilderness and to build towns and cities from the very first brick, from the very first stone. All we have done has been done through the effect of consciousness. And we have prospered. And we we have become a beacon to the world.
Our principles have been tested before. Religion and economic interests divided the thireen colonies. Degrees of loyalty to a distant crown divided us. The enslavement of the African race divided us. The rise of industry divided us. Our role in the death struggle of great European Empires divided us. Our responsibility to defeat totalitarianism divided us. We were divided by fears of nuclear annihilation. We have been divided by questions of social and economic justice. We continue to be divided by differing understandings of our obligations to God and Country.
Yes - our principles have been tested. Tested, perhaps, as no nation before. We have been tested because we, alone among nations, have set ourselves to the test. We have chosen to live by principles that demand to be tested.
It is, in fact, our founding principles that others would seek to undermine and to destroy. Our enemies - those who reject the foundations upon which we established this nation - will assail us. It is not to take our lives; it is not to destroy our property; it is not to seize our land; it is not to destroy our prosperity; it is not to enslave or to humble us - these are not the reasons they assail us. Throughout history, nations have sought these things of other nations because it was the way of Man and the way of Nations and the way of the World. It was the way until we showed that there was a new path, a new reason, a new way that Man and Nations and the World should be.
As we face this new test, we must realize it is the same test as all the others. Can Human Dignity persevere in the face of hatred? Can Democracy persevere in the face of chaos? Can the God-given rights of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness persevere in the face of fear, pain and sacrifice? Can Government in service to the Governed persevere in the face of danger? That is and always has been the test. It is the test we face in this newest challenge.
Our enemies will win, and we will fail the test, only if we compromise that which makes us who and what we are. They will win, and we will fail the test, only if they succeed in making us like them. Our enemies will win, and we will fail the test, only if we choose to be other than what we have chosen to be for the last nearly three hundred years. In short, our enemies can only win if we choose to destroy ourselves.
We therefore solemnly commit today that America remains what it has always been - the path of freedom, the guiding light of human dignity. We will defend our shores, our property, our people - but more than all these, we shall defend the ideas and ideals we chose at the beginning, and that have changed the world.
