By Edwin Cooney
Presidential responses to world crises have been varied depending on domestic and international circumstances.
FDR labeled Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941 "a date which will live in infamy!” Later in his address to Congress that December 8th, FDR declared: “But always will our whole nation remember the character of the onslaught against us. No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory…but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us!"
President Truman's response to the invasion of South Korea by the North that Sunday, June 25th, 1950 was urgent but not particularly angry or outraged. President Truman insisted that the United States should use the military forces of the newly created United Nations to counteract and that it would go a long way to secure the prospects for future world peace.
President Eisenhower told us during his Inaugural Address on Tuesday, January 20th, 1953 that "we must be ready to dare all for our country.”
President Kennedy's response to missiles in Cuba was determined for their removal but absent of indignation.
President Reagan simply let the world know how evil were the Soviets.
President Biden asserted last Thursday, in addition to his support of Israel and his characterization of Hamas' aggression as "pure evil," that in its outraged response, Israel must do everything it can to save the lives, homes, and property of the Palestinian residents of Gaza.
No one who listened to President Biden's address can assert that there was either timidity or intimidation in what he had to say to his fellow citizens or to the world community.
I can't remember a presidential address that painted a gloomier assessment of so many international crises. According to the president, if Vladimir Putin succeeds in defeating the Ukraine, he and others in his government will target Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania for recapture into Russia's domain as Provinces. At the same time, he reminded you and me that Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas are getting support for their aggression from North Korea.
Avoiding both appeasement and saber-rattling, President Biden painted a grim picture of the future. He didn't measure the nuclear weapons at his disposal with any other leader's nuclear capacity. He set standards of conduct to the belligerence America must support and oppose.
While urging Congress's support for Israel and Ukraine, his search wasn't as much political as strategic. He scolded neither Republicans nor Democrats, conservatives nor liberals on the positions they are taking on public issues.
Even-handed as it was, discerning Americans saw and heard President Biden appeal to what angels there were to America's attitudes throughout the "cold war."
Lacking both pretense and presumption, the president's address to the nation last Thursday night was neither Rooseveltian nor Reaganistic in its tone or promise.
It lacked both absolute anger or timidity.
Most of all it was both calm and, above all, presidential!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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