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"A comprehensive, collaborative elections resource."
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George H. W. Bush - Address at West Point (January 5, 1993)
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| Parent | Parent Candidate |
| Contributor | Thomas Walker |
| Post Date | , 12:am |
| Description | Thank you all very much. Good luck. Please be seated. Thank you, General Graves, for that very kind introduction. Barbara and I are just delighted to be here and honored that we could be joined by our able Secretary of the Army, Mike Stone; of course, the man well-known here that heads our Army, General Sullivan, General Gordon Sullivan; and Gracie Graves, General Robert Foley, General Galloway; Shawn Daniel, well-known to everybody here, been our host, in a sense; and a West Point alum who has been at my side for 4 years, over here somewhere, General Scowcroft, graduate of this great institution who served his country with such distinction. May I salute the members of the Board of Visitors. I see another I have to single out, General Galvin, who served his country with such honor. And, of course, save the best for last, the Corps of Cadets, thank you for that welcome.
Let me begin with the hard part: It is difficult for a Navy person to come up to West Point after that game a month ago. Go ahead, rub it in. [Laughter] But I watched it. Amazing things can happen in sports. Look at the Oilers, my other team that took it on the chin the other day. [Laughter]
But I guess the moral of all of this is that losing is never easy. Trust me, I know something about that. [Laughter] But if you have to lose, that's the way to do it: Fight with all you have. Give it your best shot. And win or lose, learn from it, and get on with life.
I am about to get on with the rest of my life. But before I do, I want to share with you at this institution of leadership some of my thinking, both about the world you will soon be called upon to enter and the life that you have chosen.
Any President has several functions. He speaks for and to the Nation. He must faithfully execute the law. And he must lead. But no function, none of the President's hats, in my view, is more important than his role as Commander in Chief. For it is as Commander in Chief that the President confronts and makes decisions that one way or another affects the lives of everyone in this country as well as many others around the world.
I have had many occasions to don this most important of hats. Over the past 4 years, the men and women who proudly and bravely wear the uniforms of the U.S. armed services have been called upon to go in harm's way and have discharged their duty with honor and professionalism.
I wish I could say that such demands were a thing of the past, that with the end of the cold war the calls upon the United States would diminish. I cannot. Yes, the end of the cold war, we would all concede, is a blessing. It is a time of great promise. Democratic governments have never been so numerous. What happened 2 or 3 days ago in Moscow would not have been possible in the cold war days. Thanks to historic treaties such as that START II pact just reached with Russia, the likelihood of nuclear holocaust is vastly diminished. |
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