James A. Leach: “Mr. Speaker, today Israelis will wake up and go to work. They may drive their children to day care or have lunch with…”

“Mr. Speaker, today Israelis will wake up and go to work. They may drive their children to day care or have lunch with their friends. Israeli children will go to school and play with their classmates. We do not know which ones and we do not know where, but soon some of them will probably die. A bright light will flash, a terrifying concussion will bloom through the air, and in an instant fear, blood, panic, pain and death. And somewhere in Gaza, violent men will laugh. If this is not evil, nothing is. However unfashionable this so-called 'simplistic' vocabulary is among the diplomatic elite, it is honest. It is the vocabulary of the American people and their President whose moral clarity has led our Nation in our ongoing war on terror. Individuals, nations, and organizations who equivocate, who see the savagery of terrorists and the self-defense of free states as two sides of the same coin, as a cycle of action and counteraction, undermine that clarity.”