In an effort to keep the United States out of war, Roosevelt made the case during a fireside chat on Dec. 29, 1940, that the nation must provide additional support to Great Britain. During his remarks, he coined the famous "arsenal of democracy" phrase.
"We must be the great arsenal of democracy. For us this is an emergency as serious as war itself. We must apply ourselves to our task with the same resolution, the same sense of urgency, the same spirit of patriotism and sacrifice as we would show were we at war."
In that same speech, FDR discussed what had become increasingly clear: appeasing Adolf Hitler and the Nazi government in Germany was not a rational policy.
"No man can tame a tiger into a kitten by stroking it. There can be no appeasement with ruthlessness. There can be no reasoning with an incendiary bomb. We know now that a nation can have peace with the Nazis only at the price of total surrender."
Perhaps no leader in history used oratory more effectively than Churchill during World War II. His decisive and defiant addresses inspired a nation teetering on the brink. In his first speech as the British prime minister before the House of Commons in May 1940, Churchill made clear his commitment to the cause:
"I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."
"You ask what is our aim? I can answer in one word: Victory. Victory at all costs. Victory in spite of all terror. Victory however long and hard the road may be. For without victory there is no survival."
Big contrast from today's commander in chief...
5 comments:
Roosevelt sounds more like a hawk when he's trying to avoid war than Obama sounds when he's telling us we're already fighting one.
Just now I'm reading No Ordinary Time by Doris Kearns Goodwin. It documents the domestic life of the Roosevelts during WWII. Doris is a big fan of Eleanor Roosevelt. She states that Eleanor was always on the side of the underdog and lobbied for better housing for workers and day care for women workers. There was one class of underdog who did not attract Eleanor's sympathy. Those were the German and Japanese victims of Allied terror bombings.....It was the Allied strategy to kill as many civilians as possible. The concept was that the civilian population would pressure their governments to seek peace. This strategy eventually bore fruit after Hiroshima, but up to that pont it had no more effect on the enemy leaders than the siege of Leningrad or the bombing of London had on Stalin or Chruchhill.......I think nowadays liberals consider the mass murder of civilians to be a war crime, but back then it didn't cause even an ur-liberal like Eleanor Roosevelt a moment's hesitation......I'm not a fan of mass murder, but one notes that the terror bonmbings did radically realign the thinking of Germans and Japanese. The way of Bushido and Junker militarism no longer looked like such an ideal expression of the core values of those countries. Perhaps the Islamic world needs a defeat as thorough going and total as that suffered by the Germans and Japanese in order to get their heads on straight.
Our weapons are ever more sophisticated (and expensive) in terms of avoiding collateral damage when, in fact, relatively cheap cluster bombing could level an entire city, such as Raqqa, not only doing severe damage to ISIS but impressing on the civilian population that maybe they should stop backing the weak horse. Of course the key is getting serious about fighting a war, which is always, if you want to win anyway, a very brutal business. Our ruling class is still not serious and therefore will not do the necessary.
"Who the Hell is the God damned fool who's against us getting in this war?", "Mr Sam" Rayburn, Speaker of the House, upon hearing the solitary "No" vote from a twit pacifist Congresswoman from Montana for a declaration of war against Japan.
Obama is a sad, pathetic little cunt. Can you even call this balless sack of dog shit a man anymore? Fucking muslim traitor sympathizing pussy.
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