Churchill to Houston Forum: God Bless America!

WASHINGTON, Feb 27, 2003 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- In an address entitled "God Bless America!" given to the prestigious Houston Forum, British author and Parliamentarian Winston S. Churchill today praised the Iraq disarmament policy of President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The grandson of the famed British Prime Minister of the same name, Churchill surprised his audience, proclaiming, "I have a confession to make to you: it was my Grandfather, Winston Churchill, who invented Iraq! He did so in 1921, in his capacity as British Colonial Secretary. That year he convened and chaired the Cairo Conference to determine the shape of the Middle East in the wake of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, ruled by Turkey which, in the recently concluded First World War, had been the ally of Germany."

Of the parallels between the situation in Iraq and that facing the world in the 1930s, Churchill asserted, "Had the Allies held firm at that time and shown the same resolve to uphold the rule of law among nations that President Bush and Prime Minister Blair are demonstrating today, there is little doubt that World War 2, with all its horrors, could have been avoided."

"Today that same sickness -- a feebleness of spirit, an unwillingness to face the harsh realities of the world we live in, a determination to place a corrupt self-interest before the common good, indeed a downright cowardice -- even now infects the Governments of France, Germany and Belgium."

Churchill cited his grandfather's preference during an even greater threat in 1948. "Acutely aware of the dangers that lay ahead, Winston Churchill believed that the United States -- while it still had a monopoly of atomic power -- should require the Soviet Union to abandon the development of these weapons, if need be by threatening their use. The Truman Administration chose not to heed his advice. The Cold War, in the course of which the world -- on more than one occasion -- came perilously close to a nuclear holocaust, was the result."

"The time has come for the world community -- or such of it as has the courage to act -- to deal with this monster once and for all. Were we to shirk from this duty, the UN would go the way of the League of Nations..."

Potomac Management is a Washington-based consulting firm representing public figures and institutions.

From Neil Cavuto's "Common Sense":

Time for a lesson about a leader who gets panned. He wants to take on a bully. But trouble is, not many agree he is a bully.

They call the leader clueless.

The French foreign minister calls him reckless.

A Belgian diplomat says he risks ruining world order.

Opposition leaders at home call him a warmonger.

The bully himself says he not a bully and takes out ads in newspapers assuring the world he has no hostile intentions.

Those same newspapers call the leader arrogant. That he's wrong about the bully and that the leader's not in sync with the civilized world.

The Swiss pan him.

The Germans say they're offended.

Even regular folks in the leader's country say the leader's nuts. One newspaper calls him paranoid. Another, a "bellicose boob."

The leader is shunned. He won't go far, says one headline. The wrong man at the wrong time fighting the wrong war.

But this leader had it right. The bully had lied and the bully did attack. And this leader -- of an opposition party -- became the leader of a country.

You might have heard of him. His name was Winston Churchill. And the bully was Adolph Hitler.

Funny thing... history.

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This is a few weeks old, but so good that it bears repeating.

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