Remarks to the "Fight for Victory" Rally

United States Representative Thaddeus G. McCotter
Upper Senate Park, United States Capitol
September 10, 2007


Good morning, sovereign citizens of our free republic: we unite today as the latest generation of Americans duty-bound to defend freedom in an hour of maximum danger; and, undaunted and determined, we affirm our full measure of devotion to our troops; their families; and American victory.

It is fitting we do so this morning, as on the morrow we observe the fateful date three thousand of our fellow Americans were murdered; and, so heinously invaded, our nation was thrust into an unsought struggle – the War for Freedom – against the butcher Bin-Laden’s death cult and Middle-Eastern fascism.

To our free people, who were errantly told the Soviet implosion was the “end of history” and liberty’s enemies, September 11, 2001, was a harsh truth told anew: As the world’s beacon of freedom and bastion of hope for the enslaved and oppressed, our nation is the target for every tyrant and terrorist bent upon usurping God’s dominion over humanity. In consequence, the enemy seeks to kill us for the “sin” of being free.

For some of our fellow citizens, the shock of events has proven overwhelming; and they deny the present danger’s gravity and/or the enemy’s reality. For example, some claim Iraq is not part of the “real war on terror,” though even the butcher Bin-Laden disagrees with them. My friends, it is clear: Al Qaeda is in Iraq. American troops are defeating Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Iraq is part of the real War for Freedom!

Thankfully, this is well understood by General Petraeus and our intrepid forces – who as we speak are being despicably smeared by the less than grateful in our nation. Yet, despite the radical Left shooting at these messengers, the heartening news is General Petraeus’ counter-insurgency strategy is providing the local security and reconstruction efforts sufficient to permit the Iraqi’s “local political shift” to liberty and away from the insurgency. This separation of the population from the enemy will be the foundation upon which is built a stable and free Iraq that captures terrorist instead of creating them.

Once America has won in Iraq, this “grassroots-up” unleashing of liberty will equally bear fruit in Afghanistan. Ultimately, as a sea of free peoples comes to envelope the despotic, terror-sponsoring Iranian regime, it will, like the Soviet Union before it, be propelled by its own people into the trash can of history.

So to those desperate for surrender who claim the United States has been defeated in Iraq, let us unequivocally reassert the principle our free people have historically and heroically championed to defeat our enemies: To ensure liberty for ourselves, we must extend liberty to the enslaved.

Thus, to retreat in the face of the Al-Qaeda death cult and Mid-East fascism now, would condemn Iraqis by the tens, perhaps the hundreds of thousands for the “capital crime” of believing in our professed commitment to their freedom;

To retreat in the face of the enemy now would betray our own revolutionary commitment to and inherited legacy of liberty;

To retreat in the face of the enemy now would ideologically disarm us for, if not liberty, what can we offer the people of the region to turn them away from the enemy and toward us; and

Truly, to retreat in the face of the enemy now would dishonor the sacrifices of American and coalition citizen-soldiers who gave the last full measure of their devotion to emancipate millions of Muslims from slavery and servitude so their region and our world could experience a new birth of freedom.

To this deplorable prospect of retreat and surrender, we say: Never!

My fellow Americans, through this crucible of liberty, our course is tough; our cause is just. Our enemy is the sire of tyranny; we are the children of liberty. We cannot co-exist. A world condensed by an internet will not endure half-slave and half-free.

Thus, with prudence and courage, we must prove our devotion to liberty transcends our enemy’s obsession with death; and, united amongst ourselves and with other free peoples, we can, we must, and we will win!

May God continue to grace, guard, guide, and bless the steps of our troops and their families; and of the majestic American people who, for the sake of generations yet un-named, walk and widen the path of human freedom.