The Official Truth Squad
THE OFFICIAL TRUTH SQUAD
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Mrs. BLACKBURN. I thank the gentleman from Georgia for yielding. He is so appropriate in his remarks this evening as we talk about the big picture of what is happening with the war on terror and reminding us that this is not something that happened last week, last month, last year, or just within the last decade. This is something that started happening four decades ago and has grown more and more and more repetitive in attacks and actions and outward expressions of aggression as we have moved through the past four decades.
Yes, what has happened is we have moved from responding to these terrorist attacks as acts of civil disobedience to getting to the point after September 11 that we said, no, this is not just civil disobedience, this is an act of war. This is now a global war on terror and, indeed, it is important, it is imperative that we win in the battles in Afghanistan and that we win in the battles in Iraq. And as the gentleman from Georgia has mentioned, this is not something that is going to be quick and easy. This is going to be a long fight and a long struggle.
We must be certain that we all realize that our enemy is not an enemy that is located in one single place. There are terrorist cells all around the globe. At this point, yes, indeed, primarily they are drawn into Iraq because of the battle that is there, and that is one of the reasons it is important that we fight and that we win.
As the gentleman from Georgia knows, Mr. Speaker, we are winning. And we hear this from our men and women in uniform. We hear it from them in the stories that they recount to us. We hear it from their families. And we are very, very grateful to every one of these families and every man and woman in uniform who stands and fights and who understands the mission of why we fight.
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Mrs. BLACKBURN. Indeed, it is heartening to see that. And what a source of encouragement for those men and women in uniform to be in their day working in Baghdad and all of a sudden they receive the news that their Commander in Chief has flown through the night to come and say thank you to them for that work; thank you for what they are doing for this country.
And as the gentleman just mentioned, we fight because we have an enemy that would destroy what this country is built on. It would destroy what we stand for. It is imperative that we win so that we continue with America as we know America, so that we continue to live our lives in freedom, so that our children go to school not in fear but go ready to learn and with a sense of security, so that we live in our homes, so that we go to work, so that we have our daily life and carry on our business and do it without the fear of being interrupted by terrorist threats, by terrorist strikes, by terrorist fighting that would take place in our streets, in our cities here in America.
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Mrs. BLACKBURN. The gentleman is so correct in that, and for them it is a fierce war to bring down the pillars of free enterprise, to bring down those underpinnings of democracy that allow us to be a productive society, that allow us to be a free society.
I know that I join the gentleman from Georgia in looking forward to the debate we are going to have in this body this week, and I want to again thank the leadership for setting aside this time for us to focus once again on why we fight and why we must win and why it is imperative that we have a democratic ally in the Middle East and that we break apart the stranglehold that terrorism has had on that region of the world.
I thank the gentleman for the time, and I yield back to him.
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