The following is the text of a speech delivered today by U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., to Kansas Republicans at the GOP's annual Kansas Day event in Topeka.
Friends and fellow Republicans, it is a great pleasure to be with you this evening. Kansas Day is always a Republican family celebration and a homecoming for Franki and me.
Actually, Kansas Day appearances for me date back to my parents and Governor Payne Ratner with Marie Boyd doing the babysitting. I stop the history and Roberts Republican legacy right here in that Bill Avery is the only one here tonight who knows what Italking about.
And, as the old timers know, inviting a member of the Kansas delegation to keynote this event represents something of a departure from years of having national statesmen, political leaders and even movie stars.
I am here tonight because neither Jennifer Lopez, Britney Spears or Bob Dole could make it.
Actually, both Jerry Moran and I received invitations, but he couldndecide.
I have been handed a message for our Senior Senator, Sam Brownback. Sam, the Enron check you gave Habitat for Humanity just bounced. The Kansas State Athletic Department just let me know mine did too.
Mayor Bob Knight and Treasure Tim Shallenburger take note: Rumor has it Attorney General Carla Stovall will kick off her advertising campaign with a classified in tomorrowCapital-Journal: "Wantede, mature clean cut social companion with $250,000. Send the check first."
Well, all of that should get me in enough trouble, so lets get serious. My fellow Republicans we have an exciting year ahead. And, when the dust settles in November, I predict all Statewide offices will be occupied by Republicans. And herea surprise for our Democrat friends: The Third District will elect a Republican as well. We have an excellent crop of candidates.
Now, in most past years, your Kansas Day banquet speaker came prepared with a pep talk on election year politics. But, ladies and gentlemen, these are not normal times.
Sam, Jerry, Jim, Tod all know that while we endeavor to make a difference in Washington with regard to the issues that affect our daily lives and pocketbooks ucation, health care, tax relief, energy at our first obligation to you and our nation is to safeguard our individual freedoms and our national security.
America is at the beginning of a long and difficult war. We are winning this warfirst battles and I am confident we will be victorious in the indefinite future.
Like the "Greatest Generation" in World War II, this war will define our generation, will define us, America all of humanity generations to come.
September 11, 2001, was tragedy. Those of us who have visited New York, the Pentagon and those of us who were spared the bombing of the U.S. Capitol and loss of life on that fateful day due to the "Lets Roll" heroes of United Flight 93 count our blessings. But most important, these events also reaffirmed the core strength of our nation and our citizens.
Resilience, courage and spirit set America apart from other countries and before the tragic events some questioned whether America had lost its character.
The strength, heroism and courage of firemen, policemen, military men and women, as well as just plain citizens, erased all question of whether we had the national will to respond to such an attack.
Herehow Washington Post columnist Michael Kelly put it:
"..... Before September 11, some in America still clung to a declinist view with regard to the renewed idea of America as a good and capable and strong nation. Some lived with the notion that the great ills of our time; drugs, poverty, racism, a balkanized America simply could not be fixed or united.
But, today, we know again what we knew in 1941 at we Americans are capable of the most extraordinary victories. We do not have to suffer our enemies; we can defeat them. We do not have to endure terrorism; we can destroy the terrorist. We do not have to listen to the self-haters and self-doubters whose eternal cry is that it is our fault and that it cannot be done. We just need to do what needs to be done. We can make the next century an American one."
In fact, this is a world war with no front lines, no borders, only a series of ground zeros. It will be fought in the shadows where the lines between military and civilian blur and where the weapons are as much about intelligence and information as about explosives.
When our fathers and grandfathers marched off in the two great wars of last century they did so to keep the conflict away from Americaborders and to protect the homeland.
But this war is being fought just as hard on Americamain streets as it is in Afghan caves. The veterans of foreign wars stand shoulder to shoulder with veterans of homeland defense.
And, casualties accrue to both.
They never signed up to fight a war, but Americapostal workers, journalists and, yes, even congressional staffers and government workers, have served well to keep the flag of democracy flying in the face of anthrax and exploding airliners.
Yes, events following September 11 proved Americans have the skills, the will and the tools to respond effective to an attack by our enemies.
But the crucial question is: Does America have the will to sustain this war? Will we persevere in the months and years ahead until this enemy is defeated and incapable to unleashing further crimes against humanity?
The writer John Masefield pondered that question nearly a hundred years ago and made this comment:
"Patriotism is not a song in the street and a wreath on a column and a flag flying from a window......It is a thing very holy and and can be very terrible, like life itself. It is a burden to be borne, a thing to labor for and perhaps suffer for and even to die for; a thing which gives no happiness and no pleasantness -- but a hard life and an unknown grave, and the respect and bowed head of those that follow."
We Kansans know all about this. Since the bloody struggle that preceded statehood, we Kansans have understood that freedom comes at a price, that its defense extracts a toll. That fact has tempered our patriotism and hardened our resolve each time it has been tested.
The legacy of "Bleeding Kansas" gives Kansans caution about conflict.
Before both World Wars, there was strong sentiment in Kansas for peace. When President Woodrow Wilson came to Topeka in 1916 seeking support for war preparedness, he was greeted by the Kansas Peace and Equity League. The group denounced war, opposed military training and urged mothers not to give up their sons for "cannon fodder."
In 1939, according to newspapers of the period, Kansans cared much more about grain prices than they did about German Panzers.
But the record is clear that Kansans, once convinced war is necessary, rise to their duty with courage, with determination and with energy. The state has contributed heroes in every American conflict.
Today, the Kansas congressional delegation is extremely concerned about terrorism in the Phillipines and the fact terrorists hold two of our own as hostages. In a similar circumstance in the Philippines in 1898, the Twentieth Kansas Regiment led General Arthur MacArthurdrive toward the key objective.
"There goes Kansas," remarked the general, "and all hell canstop her."
A few days later, Philippine insurrectionists attacked the lines shouting "viva Filipino Republico." The Kansans answered with deadly rifle fire and University of Kansas football cheers.
My friends, we are being called again.
President Bush has pledged, "We will not falter, we will not fail."
At the national level, we are moving quickly to establish a system of homeland defense under the able leadership of Governor Ridge.I have served as chairman of the Armed Forces Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and now serve as vice chairman.
We have spent considerable time and resources studying both the potential for terrorism and whether our nation is prepared to deal with it.
The question of "what next" is not simple. Historically, American wars followed a logical path. The methods employed were well understood.
The next phase of this war on terrorism will not come from an operation plan on the shelf in the Department of Defense: the campaign strategies, the weapons employed, the skills of the U.S. military will be different than in any other conflict in our history because the enemy we face is different from enemies we faced in the past.
As a nation, we must not waver as we go forward in the elimination of global terrorism. There is much work to be done. You, the citizens of the great state of Kansas as well as all of our countrymen and women must remember that we are all on the front line of this war on terrorism.
As a nation we were not ready for the consequences of terrorism of the magnitude we suffered last September. We were not ready organizationally nor were ready structurally. Our recovery has been impressive and the response on the 11th and in the following weeks and months has been wonderful. There is much for which we can be proud.
However we cannot afford to remain as unprepared as we were on September 11.
Here at home, many agencies and organizations continue to react to the changing environment of global terrorism. Although few of us think the security measures we see at our borders or in our airports or in our postal facilities represent the long term solution, they are good first actions coming out of a chaotic period.
As the war in Afghanistan and world wide continues and as we suffer additional casualties to our military forces, we cannot retreat in spirit and cause or become frustrated at the cost and complexity of the final phases of the destruction of al-Qaeda and Taliban regime. The loss of each member of the military or intelligence community is painful t it will happen. We must not let the tragedy of each loss turn us from our stated mission of protection of America from our enemies and further terrorism.
As the war in Afghanistan concludes, the concern of where to continue the battle looms. Many suggest that we finish what we stared in 1991 in Iraq and remove the terrorist supporting regime of Saddam Hussein. The thought is justified. Saddam is high on the list of regimes that support global terrorism. But shifting to a war similar to that in Afghanistan has numerous, serious problems.
We need to approach Iraq carefully and encourage opposition forces in Iraq as well as develop allied support. Rushing into Iraq before we are ready is not in our interests.
As I said, the Philippines, where two Kansans are now being held by terrorists as we gather tonight, represent a serious problem, as do several other nations of concern, Iran and North Korea as well as several African and Asian nations.
I believe our best course of action is to continue to ferret out the various pockets of the al-Qaeda throughout the world. This is a necessary and difficult task. The sacrifice of thousands of Americans last September demand that we hold al-Qaeda accountable to the last member.
How do we do that? How do we continue the success we are seeing in Muslim nations renouncing and taking action against radical Islam whose maninhumanity to man reality has been exposed to the world? In Kuwait, where radical Islam was making headway, the Kuwait the United States liberated from Saddam Hussein. No longer. The tide has shifted. Why?
The answer is simple ghanistan. For years, Islamic extremism went from victory to victory through terrorist attacks and revolution to the world-shaking success of September 11. Finally, it met real resistance in Afghanistan, home of the most radical Islamic State and has been utterly broken in ten weeks by American will and power.
Nothing defeats terrorism like military defeat. How could we defeat this fanatical, battle hardened, religiously grounded enemy? Osama knows.
"When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will choose the strong horse," he said on those now famous videos. Well, Osama, you picked the wrong horse and if there are any fence sitters still left there is a new respect for American power.
In 1996, Osama declared war on America and called us impotent and weak, citing America for running under fire irut, Aden, and Mogadishu not to mention our embassies and the U.S.S. Cole. He got it wrong. And the world now knows it. America has both the power and the will to fight and when we do, we prevail.
The second issue, organization and reorganization of state and federal governments, is as critical to our future security as is the capability of our combat arms to confront terrorist on distant battlefields.
The number of federal agencies that have some responsibility to prepare for and respond to a terrorist attack on the United States is over 60. On September 11, this bureaucratic tangle was just starting to awake to the warning that it was not a matter of "if" but rather a matter of "when" the United States would be attacked by terrorists, a warning my subcommittee had been issuing for two years.
Hearings we held last May clearly pointed out that there was little communication let alone coordination between all of the agencies that play a role in a terrorist attack. Congress and others were urging the Administration to act quickly to organize the federal government to address this new threat to American freedom. The "when" of the warning came much sooner than any expected.
We were not prepared adequately to detect or deter such an attack and although our response was heroic, it challenged our ability to deal with the consequences. Only the heroism and strength of our people kept the September 11 attack from becoming a wider disaster.
The appointment of Governor Ridge to head the new Office of Homeland Security is an excellent start but it is only a start. Bureaucracies hold tight to authority and giving significant power over their agencies to this new office will not be easy. Congress will have to play an active role to ensure the Office of Homeland Security has the authority it needs to coordinate the federal government to address the threat of continued terrorism against our nation.
Additionally, we must begin thinking "outside the box" to prevent the next level of terrorism. Of special interest to Kansas, our food supply and production is a major target. We must take aggressive steps to protect it, all the way from the field to the supermarket. I am pleased that Congress late last year adopted several of my recommendations in this area. But we must do more.
Each state, each of our communities face similar organizational problems. The federal government must create the blueprint for states and communities to address the terrorism threat. We need conformity in our equipment and plans as we prepare to deal with the consequences of any future attack. Conformity is necessary since neighboring states and communities may have to respond to an attack.
And we must ensure our health care system to ready to respond.
My friends, let me make a couple of very modest requests of you tonight.
First, continue supporting our President and our Congress over the long haul. We are most fortunate that the long Presidential election of 2000 resulted in the inauguration of President Bush. He inherited eight years of not-so-benign neglect of our nationmilitary. He moved swiftly to rebuild and modernize our forces and some of those results are being seen daily in Afghanistan.
Second, Jim Ryan serves with distinction on the House Armed Services Committee. Re-elect him. Third, Jerry Moran serves with equal distinction on the House Veterans Committee. Re-elect him. Fourth, Tod Tihart has worked tirelessly on the Armed Services Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee. He is our military investment banker. Re-elect him. Fifth, give us a Republican in the Third District. Sixth, there is a Marine in the Senate who serves on the Armed Services and Intelligence Committee whose motto is still Semper Fidelis. His name is Roberts. I ask that you re-elect him.
And, in behalf of Sam and myself, help give us back Republican control of the U.S. Senate. Both Sam o is making a real difference on the Foreign Relations Committee d I can be much more effective as chairmen instead of ranking members. We have been in the minority and we have been in the majority.
Believe us, the majority is better, better for us and better for you.
Finally, love and nurture your families. Keep building our communities. Give Kansas the tools it needs to prosper and grow in the information age. Expand the economic base so that our children have a sound future.
And, while we are doing all of this, remember we are at war. Donforget the rifle, the Wildcat yell or the Jayhawk fight song.
This is an important time in our nationhistory. We are reminded that to each generation falls the duty of defending freedom, protecting democracy and establishing our security.
Churchill reminded his people that all they had to offer was blood, sweat and tears.
In the end, that is all any generation has to offer.
But our blood, sweat and tears are plenty.
No enemy has been able to stand against them.
So, too, will they defeat the enemy we face today.
Churchill said upon hearing about the attack on Pearl Harbor:
"Silly people, that was the description many gave in discounting the force of the United States. Some said they were soft, others that they would never be united, that they would never come to grips. They would never stand bloodletting, that their system of government and democracy would paralyze their war effort.
"Now we will see the weakness of this numerous but remote, wealthy and talkative people. But, I had studied the American Civil War fought out to the last desperate inch. American blood flowed in my veins. I thought of a remark made to me years before e United States is like a gigantic boiler. Once the fire of freedom is lighted under it, there is no limit to the power it can generate. It is a matter of resolve."
And that is true. God bless our great state. God bless our great nation. God bless us all.
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