OPINION:
On March 30, 1961, Ronald Reagan delivered a warning that remains as relevant today as it was more than six decades ago: “Freedom is never more than a generation from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected and handed on to them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in America where men were free.”
Eighty-two years ago, the Greatest Generation answered that challenge on the beaches of Normandy and across the islands of the Pacific. They endured unimaginable hardship, risked everything and sacrificed thousands of lives to preserve liberty.
Americans enjoy freedom today because they chose courage over comfort and duty over convenience.
Now, the current generation must make the hard decision: Choose resolve over timidity and commitment over politics.
Thankfully, the sacrifices required now are nowhere near those demanded of the men and women who fought and died during World War II. Higher fuel prices, economic uncertainty and temporary inflation are hardly comparable to the battlefield losses and national hardships Americans endured in the 1940s.
Yet sacrifice, in whatever form it comes, remains the price of preserving freedom. The threats confronting the free world have changed identities, but they have not disappeared.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its terrorist proxies openly advocate the destruction of Israel and routinely threaten the United States and its allies. Their ideology rejects religious liberty, democratic government and fundamental human rights.
The Iranian regime’s brutality was displayed for the world to see on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas — an Iranian-backed terrorist organization — murdered approximately 1,200 people in Israel and took hundreds hostage.
No serious leader can dismiss the dangers posed by a nuclear-armed Iranian regime. Iran has acknowledged possessing substantial quantities of highly enriched uranium and has repeatedly demonstrated its ballistic missile capabilities.
Make no mistake: This is not a hypothetical threat. It is a present and growing reality.
Given the gravity of this moment in history, there can be no sugarcoating or disguising what is at stake and what it will take. Efforts to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon indeed involve sacrifice.
No, sacrifices in distant lands are not desirable, but leadership requires confronting reality rather than wishing it away.
Calls to simply end the conflict (such as the recent resolution passed in the House of Representatives and cheered on by the legacy media), regardless of the consequences, risk repeating one of history’s most costly mistakes: confusing the absence of war with the presence of lasting peace.
The lesson of the 20th century proves that aggressors are not deterred by weakness and threats do not disappear just because of some attempt to ignore or pacify them.
As British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain learned too late, peace purchased through illusion is not peace at all.
The objective today must not be to just end conflict. It must be to secure a lasting peace by ensuring that those who threaten civilization are denied the means to carry out their ambitions.
A world in which the Iranian regime possesses nuclear weapons would be fundamentally more dangerous and less free, and the consequences would extend far beyond the Middle East. The security of the United States, Israel and every other democratic nation would be profoundly diminished.
Reagan’s warning echoes across the decades because every generation eventually faces its own test. This generation is no exception.
The question now is whether the United States will act decisively while there is still time. If it does not, then this could be the generation that spends its sunset years telling its children and grandchildren what it was once like to live in a world where freedom was secure.
• Randy Evans was the U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg from 2018 to 2021.
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