[fintstone]

I was elected as a young state senator in 1960, the same year John Kennedy was elected President and would continue to lead a worldwide containment against Communism - and cut taxes.

Back then, it was a bipartisan commitment, by both Democrats and Republicans, to do what was necessary to keep America safe... and the world free. It was said of U.S. foreign policy back in those days that partisanship stopped at the water's edge.

And then I witnessed my Party, like my country, ripped apart by the conflict in Vietnam.

No one can deny nor forget the heroism of those who served in Vietnam. They will forever have my respect and my gratitude. But what is necessary today is not to confuse the lessons learned from Vietnam.

For some today, Vietnam seems to be the first, last and only lesson to consider when it comes to the threats to world peace and freedom.. and America's responsibility in that struggle.

To them, all the other major struggles during the 20th century - World War I, World War II, Korea, the Cold War, - all hold no lesson, no relevance to America's role today.

To them, Vietnam defines us, it defines them, it defines America.
To them, Vietnam is not the exception, it is the rule. The only rule.

They are the protesters of yesteryear, the Sixties radicals of San Francisco. Oh, the clothes and the hair and the music may have changed, but not what is in their hearts and in their heads.

These people don't believe America is a liberating force. Instead, they see America as an occupier, a Darth Vader military empire trying to colonize people.

They see any who would ally themselves with America as corrupt puppets or hired mercenaries. The "coerced and the bribed," as John Kerry describes them.

For every world problem, this crowd always blames America first. They see despotic regimes as nuisances not as threats. And, dictators are always given every benefit of the doubt.

They don't believe there is any great threat requiring military action. They believe that military force has never solved anything, and that if it did, it shouldn't have.

In their rise to prominence, these leaders have been on the wrong side of history and the wrong side of freedom during the last three decades.

As I have said many times and underline again tonight, it is not their patriotism –– it is their judgment that has been lacking.

They claimed Ronald Reagan's defense buildup would lead to war. They were wrong.

They claimed militant insurgents across the globe were not communists. They were wrong.

They claimed rejecting a nuclear freeze would destabilize world peace rather than the Soviet Union. Again, they were wrong.

They opposed President Ronald Reagan's policies of military resistance to Communist inroads and they were vigorous opponents of aiding the anti-Communist contras.

They believe that U. S. military force should only be used as approved by the U.N.

Before Pearl Harbor the old isolationists saw the threat but wanted no international entanglements. Today, these new isolationists want international entanglements, but see no threat.

And, if they are blind to the threat of Iraq after 9/11, how can one believe these enlightened souls would have foreseen the threat of Al Queda before 9/11. And what other threats will they refuse to see?

It's hard to see a threat to America from abroad when you view America as a threat to those abroad.
Ultimately, this boils down to a question of how each of us sees America today.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, do we see America as the America of Vietnam, or is it the America of World War II, Korea and the Cold War?

What do we see as America's role in a time of turmoil? Through this debate and this election, America will once again define its security role.

As we look at the past to define our role for the future, I believe we have to be careful about what lessons we claim to have learned from history, and particularly Vietnam.

If it becomes fixed in the minds of a few persons that the wrong lesson is the right lesson, it matters little.

But if the wrong lesson is adopted as the right lesson by a majority in a democracy, it can take forever to erase a mistruth, and then only with great pain.

History shows nations can become confused. For example, in France, the competing principles of equality and freedom have warred against each other since the French Revolution.

How can man be equal yet also be free to become unequal.

America too could become confused, and the principles of security and freedom could begin to war with each other here.

If you see America through the prism of Vietnam, if you see America as a conqueror, an oppressor, then your vision of America's role in the world will differ greatly from those who see America as a liberator and an ally for those who are free and want to be free.

This election will go greatly toward deciding which America we believe we are. America must resolve these questions because you see, our opponents may also have learned from Vietnam.

Our opponents may have learned that the lesson from Vietnam was that the way to beat America's military power is to break America's willpower.

Our opponents may have learned that a measure of your success in weakening America's willpower is seen by what the opposition party says it is. And, also, what the American media says it is. Right now, both lean toward an anti-war position.

Our opponents may have learned from Vietnam it is possible to throw out your tormentor if your actions can move U. S. voters against their President.

Our opponents may have learned that a thousand protestors on U. S. streets may mean more for victory than twenty thousand uniformed soldiers on the battlefield.

And so, because politics no longer end at the water's edge, future opponents will look not only at military reports but also the U. S. press, where they believe you can measure whether you are breaking the will of the American people.

So our opponents may maintain militant efforts on such false premises or target events to impact national elections, as they did in the Madrid bombings.

And once we become so pliable, America and the world are in real trouble. Because, as a democracy easily bent by terrorist manipulations, we will no longer play an international role, or else to do so, we will have to be less of a democracy.

Security and Freedom will begin to war with each other.

And, either way, at that point, America will retreat into an isolationism not seen since before Pearl Harbor.

Oh yes, history has lessons to teach us. Has it ever! But the lessons of reality are not found solely in the jungles of Vietnam.

They are also to be found in the waters of Pearl Harbor, the forests of Argonne, the ovens of Auschwitz, the turbulent air over Germany, the shores of Normandy, the beaches of Iwo Jima, the frozen mountain ranges of Korea, the mass graves of Iraqi deserts, and yes, on the streets of lower Manhattan.

Each of these is a lesson in reality. Despite the radical anti-war voices of some, the truth about freedom does not lie with just one lesson alone, it lies within them all.

About 150 years ago, the great Fredrick Douglas said that freedom was born by what he called "earnest struggle" and he continued, "If there is no struggle, there is no progress.

Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters."

And that is why our work today in this "earnest struggle" is so important and why I am so honored to be with you.

God bless our President and God bless America.