The President Speaks

The President of the United States focuses on terrorism:

This will be a long, hard struggle. There will be setbacks along the way. But just as no enemy could drive us from the fight to meet our challenges and protect our values in World War II and the Cold War, we will not be driven from the tough fight against terrorism today. Terrorism is the enemy of our generation, and we must prevail.

...But I want to make it clear to the American people that while we can defeat terrorists, it will be a long time before we defeat terrorism. America will remain a target because we are uniquely present in the world, because we act to advance peace and democracy, because we have taken a tougher stand against terrorism, and because we are the most open society on Earth. But to change any of that, to pull our troops from the world's trouble spots, to turn our backs on those taking risks for peace, to weaken our opposition against terrorism, to curtail the freedom that is our birth right would be to give terrorism a victory it must not and will not have.

In this fight, as in so many other challenges around the world, American leadership is indispensable. In assuming our leadership in the struggle against terrorism we must be neither reluctant nor arrogant, but realistic, determined, and confident.

President Bill Clinton
August 5, 1996

Those wiley Democrats. How dare they co-opt Bush's War on Terra...five years and 37 days before Bush even learned how to say "Terra."