Robert Torricelli: “It is, I think, worth noting that the decision before this Senate is neither new nor without the apprehension that…”

“It is, I think, worth noting that the decision before this Senate is neither new nor without the apprehension that should come with historic experience. On March 31, 1939, Neville Chamberlain rose in the British Parliament and announced unambiguously, unequivocally, the British will defend the Polish frontier with the threat of war. To be certain, it was a war that inevitably was going to be fought and should have been fought. But what is instructive about the experience, as Winston Churchill later noted, 'Here was a decision at last taken at the worst possible moment and on the least satisfactory ground.' More than a generation later, the Senate has a chance to ask all the questions that were not asked in the British Parliament on that day, because before this Senate is the most solemn question that the representatives of any free people can ever ask. We are pledging the good name of this country to go to war, to consume the lives of our sons and our daughters for the defense of another people.”