Columnist Benjamin Grove: Roosevelt’s wartime words are relevant today

Benjamin Grove

Friday, Nov. 30, 2001 | 3:53 a.m.

Benjamin Grove covers Washington for the Sun. He can be reached at (202) 628-3100 ext. 269 or by e-mail at grove@lasvegassun.com

WASHINGTON -- This week marks the 60th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, the first attack on America that would "live in infamy."

As President Bush seeks answers and direction in a very different conflict than World War II, he will still find insight in the words and actions of Franklin D. Roosevelt; the Texas Republican already has mirrored the New Deal Democrat in calling for a military tribunal for suspected terrorists.

Roosevelt's speeches, which often sparked national optimism even during depression and war, hold a striking relevance for us today as Bush plunges America into a war on terrorism.

Bush, in rallying the nation behind his efforts abroad, has at times tried to seize on the optimism that often characterized Roosevelt's speeches.

In his first inaugural address in 1933, Roosevelt said, "This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." Roosevelt was talking about another topic that Bush has come to know well -- seeking bold, even risky, new solutions for reviving a dismal economy.

When Roosevelt uttered those words in 1933, skyscrapers, including the Empire State and Chrysler buildings, were already sprouting in New York. Of course, he never could have foreseen the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, on the modern-era skyscrapers of the World Trade Center.

Karen Hanson, an archivist at the Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, N.Y., said it is difficult to know exactly how Roosevelt might have reacted to Sept. 11. Roosevelt abhorred committing troops to battle. He weathered criticism abroad for his reluctance to shed American blood as atrocities unfolded in Europe.

"I have seen war," Roosevelt said in another famous quotation from a speech in Chautauqua, N.Y., on Aug. 14, 1936 -- five years before Pearl Harbor. "I hate war."

But of course, Roosevelt responded swiftly when provoked on his own soil.

"Yesterday, Dec. 7, 1941 -- a date which will live in infamy -- the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan," Roosevelt told Congress. He asked lawmakers for a declaration of war.

As World War II took a variety of twists and turns, Roosevelt relied on a hand-picked inner circle of reliable advisers. He allowed his top military officers to make most of their own decisions about specific military plans, Hanson said.

Roosevelt leaned heavily on Gen. George Marshall; longtime adviser and envoy to Britain, Harry Hopkins; Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau; and Navy Secretary Frank Knox -- among many others, Hanson said.

These days, Bush also leans on his top aides. And they now face a daunting question: As military successes mount in Afghanistan, where should the United States take the war next -- and when?

Wherever it goes, the conflict is just beginning, Bush has said. In an interview last week with Newsweek, he told reporters the war could take three years -- or 10.

What Bush has not explicitly said is that the war may never end entirely. Not as long as determined enemies of the United States train and plot in shady corners of the globe.

But Bush knows this.

FDR did, too.

Etched in the red granite walls of the Roosevelt Memorial in Washington is a quotation from a speech Roosevelt planned to give April 13, 1945. He died April 12.

"More than an end to war," Roosevelt's final unspoken address read, "we want an end to the beginnings of all wars."

Fifty-six years later, we still want that. Roosevelt's search for that end lives on in Bush.