[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 125 (Monday, September 24, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9735-S9736]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             THE WORLD SITUATION AFTER THE TERRORIST STRIKE

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in 
the Record a speech delivered by a member of the U.S. Court of 
International Trade, Evan Wallach. A graduate of Cambridge and a 
Nevadan, this expert international jurist and expert in the law of war, 
with clarity reviews the world situation, only days after the terrorist 
strike of September 11, 2001.
  There being no objection, the speech was ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:

       Speech, 21 September, 2001 Hughes Hall College, Cambridge

       It is good to be home. Whether it is because we as peoples 
     share the same language and laws, value the same rights of 
     humanity, and pray to the same God, or because I have 
     developed so many ties and deep friendships since I first set 
     foot in these halls some twenty-one years ago, I cannot feel 
     myself a stranger in this house and in this fair land. It is 
     good to be home and to share with you our common hopes and 
     our common tragedy.
       When President Richards invited me to speak here some 
     months past, I had in mind a few words about my personal 
     history at Hughes, and some specific thoughts about how much 
     Cambridge has meant to the cause of freedom. I meant to speak 
     about how England stood alone and undaunted in those dark 
     days of May and June, 1940, as the only bulwark between the 
     free world and the dark night of unending barbarism. Long 
     before we Americans were forced into the affair, even before 
     her empire could effectively rally to the colors, this island 
     held the line; and this small town, with its great 
     university, was at the center of that resistance, providing 
     many of its pilots, much of its intelligence apparatus, and a 
     great deal of its military leadership.
       My original thought was to come here to thank you yet 
     again, and to speak about the links forged in that crucible 
     of war which bind us still.
       That was before Tuesday, September 11.
       On that morning I was talking to my secretary Linda Sue as 
     she prepared coffee. When we heard the first explosion I 
     thought it was a bomb. We were relieved when the television 
     said it was an airplane. It had to be an accident. We watched 
     the second aircraft fly into the WTC. In one second it 
     changed everything. We knew we were at war.
       New Yorkers reacted very well. They reminded me so much of 
     Londoners in the Blitz. Our court is exactly a half mile from 
     the WTC. There was no panic. People helped someone when they 
     stumbled, urged one another on, and were kind to strangers. 
     It was as Dickens says, the best of times and the worst of 
     times.
       We are much a family, we Americans, a very large, very 
     extended and often very dysfunctional family. When our 
     brothers and sisters come into harm's way we react as does 
     any family; we cry, we grieve, we pray, we hold each other 
     close, and then we go on living.
       Make no mistake about it, we will go on. The continental 
     Europeans have a conception of America which has a strong 
     kernel of truth. We are still, somewhat, the vaguely 
     isolationist, happy-go-lucky plough boy who can be insulted 
     by foreign waiters, euchred by a sidewalk grifter, blow his 
     month's pay on a pretty bar girl, and still go home convinced 
     he had a real nice time in the big city.
       But when you slap us across the face, we know we've been 
     wronged and it is not in our nature to slap you in return. 
     Rather, our national instinct is to destroy your armies, 
     drive your population into exile, pillage your cities and 
     plow salt into the ground where they stood; in short, to act 
     like Europeans. Then, however, being Americans we pass out 
     chewing gum and foreign aid to help rebuild what we just 
     destroyed.
       That baser instinct, however, is fortunately also mitigated 
     by one equally strong which we suckled at the breast of our 
     mother country with the milk of Magna Carta. I refer, of 
     course, to the sanctity of the rule of law. As Edmund Burke 
     said in 1775: ``In this character of the Americans a love of 
     freedom is the predominating feature which marks and 
     distinguishes the whole . . . This fierce spirit of liberty 
     is stronger in the English colonies, probably, than in any 
     other people of the earth [because] the people of the 
     colonies are descendants of Englishmen.''
       We learned our lessons well at your knee. We learned from 
     Entick v. Carrington that though a citizen lives in the 
     rudest hut with no door or window, though the wind may blow 
     through and the rain may pour in, the King of England with 
     all his armies may not pass over his thresh hold without an 
     invitation to enter.
       We have taken the rights and liberties of Englishmen and 
     extended them even further. We have enshrined them in a 
     written Constitution and from time to time, as we have done 
     wrong to individuals and learned our lesson from that wrong 
     doing, we have added additional protections.
       We have been attacked by people from one particular part of 
     the world. I am not an Arabist or a scholar of that region's 
     history to any great degree but I think I can say those who 
     planned this attack are mistaken about the United States in 
     many ways. I believe they thought to wound us deeply by 
     attacking our national symbols, and that they viewed the WTC 
     as one such symbol. They thought, I imagine, that as a 
     capitalist state, worshipping the almighty dollar, we would 
     reel back, shaken and demoralized, by the loss of this great 
     temple of Mammon. Truly they mistake us.
       We reel back, not at the loss of a building, because 
     bricks, and mortar can always be restacked; we usually tear 
     down our great edifices every few decades or so anyway, to 
     construct something larger and more modern. What wounded us, 
     what cut us to our souls, what enraged us beyond the 
     comprehension of these bombers, was the loss of five thousand 
     of our sons and daughters, moms, and dads, firemen, 
     policemen, janitors, bankers, doctors and lawyers. For this 
     we shall not forgive the perpetrators; this we shall never 
     forget. They are sadly mistaken.
       If I could say one thing to those attackers and to their 
     followers it would be this: ``Beware of false prophets, which 
     come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly they are 
     ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits . . . 
     Every tree that bringeth not forth

[[Page S9736]]

     good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire. Wherefore, 
     by their fruits shall ye know them.''
       I trust we will not again make the mistake of the Second 
     World War and presume that because an individual or his 
     forefathers came from that region or worships our common God 
     in its way, that he is anything other than someone entitled 
     to mutual rights and mutual respect. There will be no mass 
     roundups based on race, there will be no mass internment 
     camps based on religion. We are not the same people as we 
     were in 1941, and thank God, we are not the same people as 
     those with whom we are at war.
       I take some pride, that as a member of the federal 
     judiciary I have taken an oath to do equal justice to all who 
     come before me, and I have great confidence that not only 
     shall we honor that oath, but that the executive branch will 
     equally honor its obligation to protect the rights of those 
     who reside within our nation whatever their race or religion. 
     If restrictions there are, and there will be, if some 
     limitations arise on the freedom from government interference 
     with our ability to travel, and there will be, they will be 
     applied equally. If individual officials make mistakes simply 
     because of someone's color or creed, we will correct those 
     mistakes as quickly as possible and apologize for the error. 
     We will all face the burden together, we shall spread it as 
     fairly as possible, and we shall bear it with quiet 
     determination and good humor, for we are at war.
       Make no mistake about it, we are at war. It is a different 
     war than those of the recent past, and we Americans tend to 
     be so forward looking that we confine our vision only to the 
     front, but there is historical precedent for what we are 
     about to do. When our nation was still in its infancy we 
     fought an undeclared war with your neighbors across the 
     Channel, we sent our young navy to the Mediterranean to 
     battle the corsairs of Barbary, and over the years we have 
     chased bandits and pirates beyond our borders whenever 
     our national interest required it. Often, and for many 
     decades, we shared that job with the Royal Navy.
       I cannot, in this English language, say anything about this 
     endeavor upon which we now embark in any way better than my 
     hero who led your fight for civilization in the last world 
     war. Let me quote from two speeches by Mr. Churchill: ``There 
     shall be no halting or half measures, there shall be no 
     compromise or parley. These gangs of bandits have sought to 
     darken the light of the world; have sought to stand between 
     the common people and their inheritance. They shall 
     themselves be cast into the pit of death and shame, and only 
     when the earth has been cleansed and purged of their crimes 
     and villainy shall we turn from the task they have forced 
     upon us, a task which we were reluctant to undertake, but 
     which we shall now most faithfully and punctiliously 
     discharge.

                           *   *   *   *   *

       ``We do not war primarily with races as such. Tyranny is 
     our foe, whatever trappings or disguise it wears, whatever 
     language it speaks, be it external or internal, we must 
     forever be on our guard, ever mobilized, ever vigilant, 
     always ready to spring at its throat. In this, we march 
     together.''
       In this indeed, I know, we shall march together.

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