[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 124 (Friday, September 21, 2001)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1701-E1702]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         NEW THREATS READINESS

                                 ______
                                 

                             HON. ROY BLUNT

                              of missouri

                    in the house of representatives

                       Friday, September 21, 2001

  Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Speaker, reflection on the attacks at the World Trade 
Center and the Pentagon leads us to the inescapable conclusion that the 
United States must ever be ready to meet new threats that face us, 
regardless of their source.
  During our district work period, former Congressman James W. 
Symington of Missouri spoke at Wilson's Creek National Battlefield for 
the groundbreaking on the new library at the Battlefield's visitors 
center. Mr. Symington's father, Senator Stuart Symington, spoke at the 
dedication of the National Battlefield forty years earlier. Jim 
Symington is now an attorney in Washington, D.C.
  Mr. Symington challenged those at the dedication to consider that 
threats today could be met by ``preventative diplomacy, the maintenance 
of traditional alliances, the forging of new ones, state-of-the-art 
intelligence capability, and sufficient countermeasures.''
  As we deliberate our response as a nation to the events of September 
11, I urge my colleagues to consider the comments made by Mr. 
Symington.

                    Union, Reconciliation, Readiness

       In the words of a beloved hymn: ``Time, like an ever-
     rolling stream, bears all its sons away. They vanish lightly 
     as a dream fades at the break of day.''
       Has it really been forty years since my father stood here 
     to dedicate this hard-won parksite as a memorial, in his 
     words, ``to a high point of valor'' in our nation's history? 
     It was a Missouri moment, just as it was a century earlier 
     when Missourians in concert with units from neighboring 
     states, contested and made sacred this ground in the same 
     time frame as Bull Run in Virginia and with consequences no 
     less significant. This morning we share another Missouri 
     moment seven score years from the very day this hallowed 
ground became the resting place of so many gallant young Americans. The 
legacy of their combined valor, that proud legacy, is what brings us 
together, and requires that we reflect on its meaning. To my mind its 
meaning is three-fold: Union, Reconciliation, and Readiness.

       First, it signifies our precious Union; its bonds re-forged 
     by that historic battle and so many like it over the ensuing 
     four years. Again, in my father's words, ``As we dedicate 
     this ground, let us join our hearts and minds in prayer that 
     this be a battlefield of the last war which will ever be 
     fought on native Missouri or American soil''. His words call 
     to mind a speech Abe Lincoln made in 1838 to the Young Men's 
     Lyceum in that other Springfield, Illinois: ``From where'', 
     he said, ``should we expect the approach of danger. Shall 
     some transatlantic military giant step the ocean and crush us 
     at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa 
     with a Bonaparte for a commander could not by force take a 
     drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the 
     trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot, we 
     must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation free 
     of men, we will live forever or die by suicide.''
       What a prophetic utterance--for that Illinois lawyer to 
     make, that young but farsighted Illinois lawyer destined to 
     help his country draw back from the brink of such suicide a 
     quarter of a century later. By giving his own life to the 
     rescue he confirmed the spirit he had already seeded with the 
     appeal he made in his First Inaugural Address.`` We are not 
     enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion 
     may have strained, it must not break, our bonds of 
     affection.''
       Reconciliation--the second lesson of Wilson's Creek. 
     Missourians answered this appeal long before Appomattox. Last 
     spring my wife and I journeyed down the Mississippi on the 
     Delta Queen. Stopping at Vicksburg, we visited that historic 
     battlefield, and particularly the monument to fallen 
     Missourians. I had not known until then that Missouri was the 
     only state that fielded troops on both sides in that crucial 
     campaign. We were then given a heart-rending reminder that 
blood is thicker than politics. In the shadow of that graceful Missouri 
monument we were told by our escort that during a lull in the battle a 
young Confederate soldier, learning that his brother was in the 
opposing ranks, wrote him a letter telling him their mother was ill and 
in need of some money; could he help? The brother sent word, ``of 
course'', and they arranged to meet between the lines. Seeing this, 
their comrades on both sides laid down their rifles and met together--
with the dust of the day's battle hardly yet settled--in an area of no-
man's-land that become known as ``the trysting place''. For there, 
during interludes in the fighting, they traded coffee, tobacco and 
beans, reminisced and talked of home, families, and mutual friends 
before reluctantly rising and returning of their posts.

       Those of you who may have seen the Ken Burns public 
     television documentary on the Civil War will recall, I'm 
     sure, that poignant moment, recorded on scratchy black and 
     white movie film in 1913, the Fiftieth Anniversary of 
     Gettysburg. The lame, white haired old survivors of that 
     bloodletting squared off again in reenactment of Pickett's 
     charge. The Confederate veterans, giving their now feeble 
     rebel yell, struggled up the incline to the Union parapets 
     where they were met not by gunfire, but the cheers and 
     welcoming arms of their former foes. Shedding unashamed 
     tears, they embraced, and held one another close. Had the 
     veterans of Wilson's Creek enjoyed a similar chance to meet, 
     the result would surely have been the same. As it is we must 
     assume their spirits mingle kindly together and hove 
     approvingly over us today.
       Accompanying my father at the 1961 dedication was his nine-
     year-old grandson, my nephew, Stuart Symington IV, now a 
     career diplomat. Dad wanted him here to implant indelibly in 
     his mind the significance of that joint sacrifice--just as my 
     Mother, also at the age of nine, had attended the dedication 
     in 1914 of a monument at Gettysburg to her great grandfather, 
General James Wadsworth of New York. Wadsworth had fought in that 
battle and many others, against my father's granddad, Captain Stuart 
Symington, young aide-de-camp to General Pickett. Symington survived 
the war. But the 56-year-old Wadsworth was later killed at the Battle 
of Wilderness. His remains were returned to his widow by a young 
Virginia farmer whose life he had spared in an earlier encounter. 
Little did the two soldiers know that their families would one day be 
united in that ultimate reconciliation, matrimony, a union to which I 
had my family including nine-year-old twin grandsons, are 
understandably indebted.

       Our born again Union and the new nation it forged has 
     crossed many a perilous divide since the men in blue and gray 
     stacked their arms, and returned to their homes in 1865. Two 
     subsequent world wars preceded the 1961 commemoration my 
     father addressed. The ``passions and faults of human 
     nature'', as he said, coupled with the capacity of mankind to 
     destroy itself, placed a grave burden on diplomacy, backed by 
     a force no ``transatlantic military giant'' would ever dare 
     confront. His focus was Soviet power and intent. Now nuclear 
     proliferation, bio-chemical and other potential threats to 
     our air, water, and cyberspace make today's challenges more 
     complex, diverse, and unpredictable. They require 
     preventative diplomacy, the maintenance of traditional 
     alliances, the forging of new ones, state-of-the-art 
     intelligence capability, and sufficient countermeasures to 
     detect, deter, and, if necessary, overcome any threat that 
     could arise within or beyond our borders. A daunting, multi-
     faceted challenge, but one which the heroes who contested 
     this ground would expect us to meet cheerfully and without 
     hesitation. And that is the third lesson of Wilson's Creek: 
     Readiness, the wisdom to define it and the acceptance of the 
     sacrifices necessary to maintain it.
       Mr. Chairman, in conclusion I know I speak for my departed 
     father, My brother Stuart, and all our family when I convey 
     both our gratitude and warm congratulations to you every one 
     of the remarkable men and women who dreamed, planned, 
     designed, funded, promoted, lobbied, voted, and ultimately 
     achieved this breathtaking memorial to Missouri's ``high 
     point of valor''. It

[[Page E1702]]

     is an honor to be among you. And I thank you.

     

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