The State of the Union - You Decide

BUSH: The terrorists hope these horrors will break our will, allowing the violent to inherit the Earth. But they have miscalculated. We love our freedom, and we will fight to keep it. In a time of testing, we cannot find security by abandoning our commitments and retreating within our borders. If we were to leave these vicious attackers alone, they would not leave us alone. They would simply move the battlefield to our own shores. There is no peace in retreat. And there is no honor in retreat. By allowing radical Islam to work its will, by leaving an assaulted world to fend for itself, we would signal to all that we no longer believe in our own ideals or even in our own courage. But our enemies and our friends can be certain: The United States will not retreat from the world, and we will never surrender to evil.

America rejects the false comfort of isolationism. We are the nation that saved liberty in Europe, and liberated death camps, and helped raise up democracies and faced down an evil empire. . . . We remain on the offensive against terror networks. We have killed or captured many of their leaders. And, for the others, their day will come. We remain on the offensive in Afghanistan . . . We're on the offensive in Iraq, with a clear plan for victory. . . . we are striking terrorist targets while we train Iraqi forces that are increasingly capable of defeating the enemy.


LINCOLN: Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and others would accept war rather than let it perish. . . . Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we will be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. Woe unto the world because of offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh! . . . Fondly do we hope--fervently do we pray--that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. . . .

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan--to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting piece, among ourselves, and with all nations.