The 20th anniversary commemorations of the terrorist attacks of 2001 stirred passions deep and wide. They reminded us of the fear that gripped us, the urgency we felt and the sense we had of sharing a perilous moment of history. And the remarks uttered to mark the passing of two fraught decades reflected both the tensions of that time and ours.
But we might gain even more profound perspective if, before the anniversary’s fervor passes and the moment is lost, we pause and examine two Sept. 11 speeches: one from 1941, the other made just the other day. It is all the more appropriate to linger over these addresses – part history lesson, part current events – now, when about seven-eighths of Americans were born after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and with about a quarter of the country’s population born after the attacks on New York and Washington.
These two addresses are separated in time by 80 years – a passage that saw the nation move from a middling power on the sidelines of the major struggle of the 20th century to a superpower that prevailed in the Cold War that concluded at century’s end, only to see the frustrating limits of its power in Iraq and Afghanistan in the new century.
Indeed, embedded in President Franklin Roosevelt’s fireside chat of Sept. 11, 1941, and then in former President George W. Bush’s speech last week at the Shanksville, Pennsylvania, site of the Flight 93 crash on Sept. 11, 2001, are America’s most cherished values, widely embraced but not always practiced, in jeopardy both as the United States inched toward involvement in World War II and now, as the country confronts enormous disunity in the wake of the siege of the Capitol and the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
These remarks speak of the America FDR helped shape and, in the words of Bush, “of the America I know.” They speak of courage, forbearance and above all of the determination to live up to our founding precepts, even if the speakers themselves – and we – did not always do so.
These remarks, too, are reminders of the fragility, faults and failures of leadership, for no president is without blemishes, or worse, on his historical reputation. These presidents are not exempt; Roosevelt sent Japanese-Americans to internment camps and desperate shipbound Jews to European concentration camps, and Bush prompted an invasion of Iraq on false pretenses and permitted the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” that were nothing short of torture.
Then again, on another Sept. 11, some 160 years ago in 1861, President Abraham Lincoln, in what he regarded as a strategic imperative but which was also a moral calamity, ignored the plea of the abolitionist Frederick Douglass (“To fight against slaveholders, without fighting against slavery, is but a half-hearted business ...”) and revoked the Fremont Proclamation, in which the western commander of Union forces freed Missouri’s slaves.
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There has now come a time when you and I must see the cold, inexorable necessity of saying to these inhuman, unrestrained seekers of world conquest and permanent world domination by the sword: “You seek to throw our children and our children’s children into your form of terrorism and slavery. You have now attacked our own safety. You shall go no further.”
This is FDR’s Sept. 11, 1941, plea to Americans in the wake of a German submarine’s stalking and then sinking the destroyer Greer, flying the American flag on its trip carrying mail to Iceland, southeast of Greenland. The president called it “piracy – piracy legally and morally,” and his remarks tied him in his commitment to the freedom of the seas to the actions of his predecessors John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Woodrow Wilson, all of whom sent American forces into battle for the principle. “My obligation as president is historic; it is clear,” he said. “Yes, it is inescapable.”
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There was horror at the scale ... of destruction, and awe at the bravery and kindness that rose to meet it. There was shock at the audacity – audacity of evil – and gratitude for the heroism and decency that opposed it. In the sacrifice of the first responders, in the mutual aid of strangers, in the solidarity of grief and grace, the actions of an enemy revealed the spirit of a people. And we were proud of our wounded nation.
This was Bush’s comment eight decades later, on Sept. 11, 2021, speaking of a threat to the United States entirely different but in its way equally dangerous. His remarks paired defiance of the threat and praise for Americans’ sense of purpose.
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The American people have faced other grave crises in their history – with American courage, [and] with American resolution. They will do no less today.
They know the actualities of the attacks upon us. They know the necessities of a bold defense against these attacks. They know that the times call for clear heads and fearless hearts.
This was FDR’s plea for strength for a struggle he knew was growing closer – and in fact, 87 days later the Japanese would attack Hawaii, ending the isolationism that the aviator Charles Lindbergh advocated in an antisemitic rant in Des Moines, Iowa, also delivered on Sept. 11, 1941.
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We have seen growing evidence that the dangers to our country can come not only across borders, but from violence that gathers within. There is little cultural overlap between violent extremists abroad and violent extremists at home. But in their disdain for pluralism, in their disregard for human life, in their determination to defile national symbols, they are children of the same foul spirit. And it is our continuing duty to confront them.
To be sure, some have criticized the 43rd president, arguing that, as New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie put it, “You can draw a straight line from the ‘war on terror’ to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.” But there is no mistaking either the meaning or the target of Bush’s remarks, or his disdain for mob rule and attacks on democratic values, or his commitment to religious tolerance and to America’s “welcome to immigrants and refugees.”
Let’s let FDR, not always exculpated in the jury room of history, have the last word.
And with that inner strength that comes to a free people conscious of their duty, and conscious of the righteousness of what they do, they will – with Divine help and guidance – stand their ground against this latest assault upon their democracy, their sovereignty, and their freedom.
David M. Shribman is the former executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Follow him on Twitter at ShribmanPG.
