Political Quotes

“100 years ago next month, on April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson stood in this Chamber and asked Congress to declare war on Germany. While the proximate cause for America's entry into World War I was Germany's campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare, Wilson and his supporters were also motivated by the belief that they, and the force of American arms, could deliver Europe from its intractable squabbles and, in so doing, make the world safe for democracy. It was not until the following spring that the American doughboys were committed to the Western Front in large numbers, but they provided not only the additional combat power needed to break the exhausted Germans within months, but also imbued a sense of moral purpose into what had been nearly 4 years of futile slaughter. A generation later, millions of American GIs returned to help free Europe from Adolf Hitler, while millions more pushed Japan back from its imperial conquests in Asia. This time we stayed--the living to keep the peace and prevent one form of tyranny being replaced by another and the dead as silent witnesses to the cost of liberation. The United States worked to create the United Nations and a host of other international organizations designed to bind together humanity and avoid another catastrophic world war.…”