pigfarmer
tall, thin, irritable
82 years old and still relevant, at least to me. Only slightly edited to make it understandable
“The President had one final thing to add, however, which presaged not only American determination to avenge Pearl Harbor, but a far more historic resolve.
... ‘will make very certain that this form of treachery shall never endanger us again.’ In order to achieve that certainty, we must begin the great task that is before us by abandoning once and for all the illusion that we can ever again isolate ourselves from the rest of humanity. “In these past few years—and most violently, in the past three days—we have learned a terrible lesson. “It is our obligation to our dead—it is our sacred obligation to their children and to our children—that we must never forget what we have learned. “And what we have learned is this,” he continued. “There is no such thing as security for any nation—or any individual—in a world ruled by the principles of gangsterism. . . . that we cannot measure our safety in terms of miles on any map any more. We may acknowledge that our enemies have performed a brilliant feat of deception, perfectly timed and executed with great skill. It was a thoroughly dishonorable deed, but we must face the fact that modern warfare as conducted in [ this manner] is a dirty business. We don’t like it—we didn’t want to get in it—but we are in it and we’re going to fight it with everything we’ve got.”
— The Mantle Of Command: FDR at War, 1941–1942 by Nigel Hamilton
“The President had one final thing to add, however, which presaged not only American determination to avenge Pearl Harbor, but a far more historic resolve.
... ‘will make very certain that this form of treachery shall never endanger us again.’ In order to achieve that certainty, we must begin the great task that is before us by abandoning once and for all the illusion that we can ever again isolate ourselves from the rest of humanity. “In these past few years—and most violently, in the past three days—we have learned a terrible lesson. “It is our obligation to our dead—it is our sacred obligation to their children and to our children—that we must never forget what we have learned. “And what we have learned is this,” he continued. “There is no such thing as security for any nation—or any individual—in a world ruled by the principles of gangsterism. . . . that we cannot measure our safety in terms of miles on any map any more. We may acknowledge that our enemies have performed a brilliant feat of deception, perfectly timed and executed with great skill. It was a thoroughly dishonorable deed, but we must face the fact that modern warfare as conducted in [ this manner] is a dirty business. We don’t like it—we didn’t want to get in it—but we are in it and we’re going to fight it with everything we’ve got.”
— The Mantle Of Command: FDR at War, 1941–1942 by Nigel Hamilton