With the urgency of war
What Americans--and the fence-sitting Europeans--must accept is that this is again a world war, a war that cannot be fought in half measures or by leaders paralyzed by hand-wringers. We must understand that America is the No. 1 target. Wartime conditions have often required temporary changes in our system in order to provide the security America needs. Now, it is not an issue of law enforcement or of liberty. It is an issue of the survival of our way of life. In wartime, we have in the past given government the power to do the job. During WWII and the Korean War, the government was able to draft people into the military, removing them from their civilian life and putting them into harm's way. We accepted this because we knew that when the war was over the nature of our society and the values on which it is based were so strong that we would be able to return to our normal, civilized lifestyle. That strength has been demonstrated again since 9/11 and makes it possible again to give government the powers to do the job.
But we should never again have to worry about what the president did not know and why he did not know it. Now, to quote Winston Churchill, "it is not enough to do our best; sometimes we must do what is required."
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