[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 15]
[Senate]
[Page 20915]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                         ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS

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                  WISE WORDS FROM A WARRIOR'S WARRIOR

 Mr. MILLER. Mr. President, Colonel David H. Hackworth, U.S. 
Army, Ret., knows war as few men do. Today's most decorated living 
soldier, he is a warrior's warrior.
  He joined the Army when he was 15, was battlefield commissioned in 
Korea when he was 20 and was the youngest colonel in Vietnam.
  His heroic achievements in both these wars made him a living legend. 
Never afraid to speak out, even when it meant criticizing our effort in 
Vietnam, Hackworth has long been a knowledgeable observer worth 
listening to.
  This old soldier who has seen so much shared his recent observations 
in a thought-provoking, tell-it-like-it-is column in The Washington 
Times. It is an article that should be read and believed by all 
Americans. I ask that the article be printed in the Record.
  The article follows:

             [From the Washington Times, October 27, 2001]

                            Fight or Flight?

                          (By David Hackworth)

       My No. 1 son rang from Florida: ``Dad we're scared. We're 
     starting to wonder if we made a mistake leaving Indiana.'' 
     Another Floridian, Frederick George, wrote: ``I've never been 
     more depressed than now. I'm 86 years old, and I've seen a 
     lot.''
       My phone rings off the hook, and my mailbox is jammed. Most 
     of the messages say: We're not coping well with this War 
     Against Terrorism. My comeback: Get used to it.
       We're in for at least 30 rounds, and Round One is far from 
     being over. My 5- and 8-year-old grandkids will probably be 
     in college before the last terrorist creep has been hunted 
     down and folks can get back to the way things were before 
     Sept. 11.
       You can try running, but you can't hide from fear. Just ask 
     the yellow-stained members of the House who ignored the 
     report from last year's Hart-Rudman Commission predicting ``a 
     direct attack against American citizens on American soil is 
     likely over the next quarter-century'' and then cut and ran 
     when the first shot came their way.
       But the attack on the World Trade Center proved in spades 
     that all citizens of every free country in the world are now 
     targets, so there's no longer any place safe to run. The 
     quickest way to get a grip and make it through this new kind 
     of war is to check out--and copy--the combat soldier's MO. 
     The whole living-on-the-bayonet-edge mindset becomes almost 
     second nature once a grunt accepts that his life can be 
     snuffed out any second. His ears get used to incoming--they 
     automatically tell him to hit the deck because a round is 
     about to thud in close, or to finish that smoke because it's 
     going over the hill. He's used to walking through areas where 
     one misstep will explode a mine and take his leg or life, and 
     he learns to take care of himself and his buddies almost 
     without thinking. Or he lets fear rule and goes mad. Or he 
     goes into denial and gets killed.
       Many of you are combat vets--you just don't remember that 
     for most of your lives you lived with the fear of being 
     instantly incinerated and radiated by the Bomb. Remember the 
     air-raid sirens and the ``Duck and Cover'' drills? Those 
     25,000 Soviet nuclear warheads once pointed at you and yours 
     would have done a zillion times more damage than terrorist 
     bombs, kamikaze planes or bugs and germs.
       On the battlefield, I wore my steel pot begrudgingly. It 
     was heavy and a pain. But I knew it would improve my chances 
     of staying alive, so I cursed it while I wore it. Now I 
     resent wearing a surgical mask and gloves and opening much of 
     my mail outside. But just like wearing that helmet, it helps 
     me stay alive while the FBI and the police track down the 
     terrorist sleepers imbedded in our society.
       And so must all of you learn to live on a potential killing 
     field. Instead of letting fear knock you down, use it as 
     warriors do to stay alive. Fear can pump up your reactions if 
     employed positively and let you make it through the darkest 
     night. Survival is our strongest instinct, and we will win 
     this sucker just as we did World War II, the Cold War and the 
     conflict that follows this one.
       The other survival skill you should borrow from a grunt is 
     alertness. A soldier asleep on guard duty is a dead soldier. 
     A terrorist will have a tough time doing his thing if we all 
     keep a sharp eye out for whatever doesn't compute. Like some 
     weirdo learning to fly a plane who wants to give takeoffs and 
     landings a miss. Or a non-islander buying a one-way air 
     ticket to Hawaii or Guam.
       Fortunately, most Arab terrorists coming our way will be 
     easy to spot except on Halloween. If you see some character 
     at the water reservoir, parked near the nuclear reactor, 
     fiddling with a building's air-conditioner intake vents, 
     delivering unordered fire extinguishers or bicycling around 
     with a backpack, keep him under surveillance and notify the 
     authorities quickly.
       Use that fear to stay alert and stay alive.

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