Thank God For The ‘Iron Lady’: Margaret Thatcher Reminds America This Is No Time To ‘Go Wobbly’

(Washington, D.C.): Like Winston Churchill before her, Lady Margaret Thatcher has sounded a
call to arms for America that should resonate throughout the years. In 1946, Mr. Churchill
warned the United States of the peril posed by communist imperialism that was imposing an “iron
curtain” across the continent of Europe. Last week, Lady Thatcher issued a no less urgent
warning about the abiding need for American military might and international leadership.

In an address (excerpts of which are attached) entitled simply “Courage” — which dealt largely
with that exhibited by Ronald Reagan during his years as President — and delivered at the
Heritage Foundation’s 25^th Anniversary Gala in Washington), Lady Thatcher declared:

“…[T]he post-Cold War slackening of resolve has led to a lack of military
preparedness. Understandably, with the end of the Cold War the sense of omni-Present
Danger receded. Less excusably, the fact that the Soviet Union and its successor states
no longer challenged the West’s very survival led Western countries to behave as if
other, new threats could be ignored. Yet, the truth is so obvious that surely only an
expert could miss it: There is never a lack of potential aggressors.

“We now have to reassess our defense spending, which has been cut back
too far. Still more significant has been the failure to grasp the vital importance of
investment in the very latest defense technology. The crucial importance of
keeping up research and development in defense is the great lesson of SDI.”

Particularly noteworthy was the assessment the “Iron Lady” gave of the danger within the
American and other Western democracies:

“Today’s international policy makers have succumbed to a liberal contagion
whose most alarming symptom is to view any new and artificial structure as
preferable to a traditional and tested one. So they forget that it was powerful
nation states, drawing on national loyalties and national armies, which enforced UN
Security Council Resolutions and defeated Iraq in 1991. Their short-term goal is to
subordinate American and other national sovereignties to multilateral
authorities; their long-term goal, one suspects, is to establish the UN as a kind of
embryo world government.”

With her full address in honor of President Reagan and the Heritage Foundation, Lady
Thatcher has once again demonstrated the unique qualities of leadership and vision that served her
people so well during her extraordinary premiership — and that are much in need in this country
today. These qualities are underpinned by her own indomitable courage. It is to be earnestly
hoped that they will always inspire a small measure of such courage in those who share her
commitment to safeguarding democracy’s freedoms and security.