Two presidents offer inspiration, 80 years apart

Last week’s 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. 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.

“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.”

“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.

“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.

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.