StarPoet Newsletter Vol. XII, No. XVI

poem and president spring bursts forth    nineteen months until we elect our next incompetent
a pox on all their conniving money grubbing parties

the new suit is most always like the old suit without the wear and tear of actual use

These carefully targeted actions are designed to disrupt the use of Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations and to attack the military capability of the Taliban regime.

— George W. Bush, Oct. 7, 2001

We act to protect thousands of innocent people in Kosovo from a mounting military offensive. We act to prevent a wider war, to diffuse a powder keg at the heart of Europe that has exploded twice before in this century with catastrophic results. And we act to stand united with our allies for peace.

— Bill Clinton, March 24, 1999

The people of Somalia, especially the children of Somalia, need our help. We’re able to ease their suffering. We must help them live. We must give them hope. America must act.

— George H.W. Bush, Dec. 4, 1992

Why must this nation hazard its ease, and its interest, and its power, for the sake of a people so far away? We fight because we must fight if we are to live in a world where every country can shape its own destiny. And only in such a world will our own freedom be finally secure.

— Lyndon B. Johnson, April 7, 1965


South Vietnam is already under attack — sometimes by a single assassin, sometimes by a band of guerillas, recently by full battalions. The peaceful borders of Burma, Cambodia and India have been repeatedly violated. And the peaceful people of Laos are in danger of losing the independence they gained not so long ago. .?.?. The very simple question confronting the world community is whether measures can be devised to protect the small and the weak from such tactics. For if they are successful in Laos and South Vietnam, the gates will be opened wide.

— John F. Kennedy, Sept. 25, 1961

In the simplest terms, what we are doing in Korea is this: We are trying to prevent a third world war.

— Harry S. Truman, April 11, 1951

Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday speak for themselves.

— Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dec. 8, 1941

I advise that the Congress declare the recent course of the imperial German government to be in fact nothing less than war against the government and people of the United States; that it formally accept the status of belligerent which has thus been thrust upon it; and that it take immediate steps not only to put the country in a more thorough state of defense but also to exert all its power and employ all its resources to bring the government of the German empire to terms and end the war.

— Woodrow Wilson, April 2, 1917

Now, therefore, I, ABRAHAM LINCOLN, President of the United States, in virtue of the power in me vested by the Constitution and the laws, have thought fit to call forth, and hereby do call forth, the Militia of the several States of the Union, to the aggregate number of 75,000, in order to suppress said combinations, and to cause the laws to be duly executed. The details for this object will be immediately communicated to the State authorities through the War Department.

I appeal to all loyal citizens to favor, facilitate, and aid this effort to maintain the honor, the integrity, and the existence of our National Union and the perpetuity of popular government, and to redress wrongs already long enough endured.

--Abraham LIncoln, April 27, 1861