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Remarks by Secretary of the Navy Gordon England
At Western Connecticut Council Navy League
Stamford Yacht Club, Stamford, Conn.
March 18, 2002

	SEC. ENGLAND:  Thank you very much for that kind welcome.  
It is indeed a privilege to serve as your Secretary of the Navy 
but I am reminded that this job has humble beginnings.  My 
daughter sent me a clipping from a Baltimore paper in 1802 -- 
where of course I was born in Baltimore – where in the 
classified section, there was an advertisement to fill the 
position of Secretary of the Navy.  One man from Baltimore 
answered the ad and he interviewed.  I don't know who he 
interviewed with, but he became secretary of the Navy, and he 
served for three years.  And during those three years, he was 
responsible for the Navy's three ships.  (Laughter.)

	The Navy's changed a little bit since 1802.  (Soft 
laughter.)  I was -- we were at the table talking about the 
first -- the ambassador's residence -- the United Kingdom 
ambassador's residence in Washington.  This is a Trafalgar 
Night.  This is a huge celebration -- huge celebration.  And I'm 
sitting there talking with him, and we're chatting, and he made 
some comment -- he was going to be the speaker after dinner.  
And I said, "Well, Nigel," I said, "My experience after 40 years 
is, it doesn't make any difference what you talk about; you just 
have to keep it short."  I said, "Because in 40 years, I've 
never heard anyone complain, ever, that a talk after lunch or 
after dinner was too short."  I mean, always keep it short.

	And so we had dinner, and after dinner, there were toasts.  
And he was one of the people that gave a toast.  And he stood 
up, and he said, "To the queen."  And everybody said, "To the 
queen!"  He sat down.  I said, "Nigel, that was just right."  
(Laughter.)

	Now I also -- I also -- I noticed there was a lot of Navy 
League ties here today.  And I have a Navy League tie, but I did 
not wear my Navy League tie.  Now the reason I did not wear my 
Navy -- my Navy League tie is also because of Trafalgar.  You 
know, Nelson at Trafalgar -- quite famous Battle of Trafalgar -- 
on the HMS Victory, right, his command ship -- when he went into 
battle, right, they put the signal flags up, right?  The signal 
flags going up -- does anybody remember what the signal flags 
said at the famous Battle of Trafalgar?  It's a famous direction 
-- right within sight.

	Q     Yes, Mr. Secretary.  "England expects that every man 
shall do his duty."

	SEC. ENGLAND:  God bless.  There you go!  (Applause.)  So 
there's -- and that's what the tie says.  It says, "England 
expects that every man will do his duty," so I wear my tie now, 
because, you know, that's a great message on there.  (Laughter.)  
The fact is, I thought, "I need to have these ties -- I have 
need to have these flags in my office."  (Laughter.)  Right?  He 
was ahead of his time!

	Let me just say a few words about our great Navy.  First 
of all, I will tell you that we have a great Navy and Marine 
Corps who deserve our deepest appreciation and with the help of 
the president, Secretary Rumsfeld and the Congress, we are doing 
that.  But we have this terrific technology, finest -- finest of 
any technology any Navy in the world has ever had.  This is 
unquestionably the greatest Navy ever in the history of the 
world, this United States Navy.

	I will tell you, however, it's not the technology.  That 
is not what makes our Navy.  The enduring strength -- the 
enduring strength of the United States Navy for 226 years are 
our people.  That's the enduring strength of our Navy.  It's the 
enduring strength of our military -- are our people.  So we have 
superior technology, but other people can buy technology.  But 
we have our superior people.  And that's what makes this such a 
great Navy and such a great military for the United States.

	And these people, as you know, they volunteer.  They 
volunteer to come serve their nation, protect and defend liberty 
-- not just here in the United States but around the world.  And 
the time now, of course, becomes ever more critical since 9/11.

	Now the Navy's doing a magnificent job.  We're doing a 
magnificent job around the world.  We are forward-deployed 
around the world, and of course we are very active in the 
Arabian Sea, all Pakistan, all -- I mean all Afghanistan.

	As you may know, on 9/11, when the events of New York 
occurred, that was seen on television by our sailors on the 
Enterprise.  The Enterprise was on the way back when the assault 
event happened in New York.  They turned around, headed back, 
because they knew they would be called upon by the president to 
respond.  So the Navy was on the scene.

	And of course we have carried a lot of the air campaign 
since the war started against the terrorists.  We've carried a 
lot of that war campaign, and we've also had our Marines on the 
ground, far inland, much further inland than we ever thought we 
would be deploying our Marines.

	So the Navy's done a magnificent job.  They have done 
that, I will tell you, in concert with our U.S. military.  I 
mean, the Air Force has been there, Army's been there.  It has 
been a great teamwork.  And of course our Special Forces have 
been there.  Our SEALs have been there, along with the other 
Special Forces of the other military, and they played a 
dramatic, dramatic role early on in this war.

	I will give you an interesting vignette from early on in 
the war, but it goes on today.  There are photographs, if you 
look early in the war, the Northern Alliance -- Northern 
Alliance, when we were still up around Kabul, in an attack.  
This was an attack on horseback.  So here's the Northern 
Alliance on a thousand horses, carrying AK-47s and RPGs and sort 
of all the things you would expect them to have.  But if you 
look closely at the photograph, you will also see U.S. Special 
Forces, and they're not carrying AK-47s, and they're not 
carrying RPGs.  They have laptops open -- open -- on horseback, 
and they have direct communications with satellites.  And those 
satellites have direct communications with our Navy fighters and 
with Air Force airplanes, and we are doing precision direct fire 
for the Northern Alliance from people on horseback with direct 
communication to our precision attack aircraft -- dramatic, 
dramatic change in how we conduct warfare.

	I call this looking through a knothole in Afghanistan.  
We're starting to get a view of what the future will be like, 
because it's totally different than we have fought warfare in 
the past.

	Now let me make a comment about the war itself.  This is 
not a war against Afghanistan, as the president said; this is a 
war against terror, terrorists around the world.  And we will 
not -- we will not -- leave a sanctuary for there terrorists, 
because we cannot leave a sanctuary for these terrorists.  And I 
say, "we" -- the United States of America with all our friends 
and coalition partners around the world.  And if you go out in 
the Arabian Sea, you will see ships from many, many nations out 
there.  Our coalition partners are with us in this war against 
terrorism, and this war will continue, in my judgment, for a 
long time.  The president said this could be a long war.  It 
will be a long war.

	I was in Singapore just a few weeks ago.  Last December in 
Singapore, they broke up a terrorist cell in Singapore, and this 
was very unexpected.  These were not like the folks you sort of 
see in the pictures in Afghanistan, I mean these were people who 
had businesses in Singapore but were al Qaeda terrorists.  And 
by the way, they were planning to attack our embassy and they 
were planning to attack our Navy installations, but it was 
broken up by the Singapore government.

	By the way, the video that the terrorists took in 
Singapore, they actually sent -- they actually sent to 
Afghanistan, and later, when al Qaeda headquarters buildings 
were bombed by U.S. forces, they actually found these tapes.  So 
the tapes that were made in Singapore, they actually found at 
the terrorist headquarters.

	So there are people around the world who are determined to 
do damage to people -- not to people or things, but to our way 
of life.  I've said to many people the attack on the Cole, the 
attack in New York, the attack on the Pentagon, the plane that 
crashed -- whatever their target was -- in Pennsylvania, they're 
not attacking things, they're really attacking our way of life, 
I mean fundamentally attacking our way of life.  So people 
around the world who cherish freedom and liberty are joining 
together in this fight, and we will stay in this fight and we 
will indeed prevail in this fight and we will be victorious, 
because we must be victorious in this fight.  We cannot allow 
organized terrorists, we cannot allow them to get weapons of 
mass destruction, and in time they will, and they will use them, 
if they get them.  I don't think there's any doubt in anybody's 
mind, if they had those weapons, they would use them.  So this 
is a very, very crucial fight.

	I will give you one short story about the president of the 
United States.  And I shared this last night I was with the 
graduating class, 100th graduating class at the Senior Enlisted 
Academy in Rhode Island at our War College.  And I told them 
story of what happened on 9/12, because on 9/10 I was with the 
president at the Navy Yard, and that was the day we had -- the 
Prime Minister of Australia was there, and it was a great day to 
honor the friendship between our countries.  So it was a day 
very festive with the flags flying and with the bands playing.  
It was a beautiful day.  It was one of those great military days 
you like to be part of.  That was on 9/10.

	On 9/11 was this dramatic event against the United States.  
Well, 9/12 the president came to the Pentagon.  He came to the 
Pentagon about 6:00 in the evening, and he was there with his 
advisors, Dr. Rice, Condoleezza Rice, and Andrew Card, his chief 
of staff, a few other people.  And he met that evening with the 
secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, and Deputy Secretary Paul 
Wolfowitz, the other two service secretaries, myself, the 
service chiefs and chairman.

	Now, at the time he came to the Pentagon, of course the 
Pentagon was still burning.  We still had smoke in the building 
and sirens sounding; we put all of our people on alert, all of 
our military people around the world were on alert, and we were 
certainly on alert in Washington, D.C.  But it was a time, if 
you can remember, of great concern and consternation because 
everyone was still trying to determine what these events all 
meant.  And the president came into the Pentagon, it was 
burning, you could smell it, all the fuel, because, you know, it 
was a traumatic time.  We didn't know how many people had been 
killed at that point.  We didn't have any -- we knew people were 
missing, but people were traveling and, you know, a lot of 
people were out of the building.  So it was a very difficult 
time.

	The president came in -- and this was now the leader of 
the nation leading the leaders of defense.  And the president 
came in, and the president clearly understood the ramifications 
of the day before.  The president came in and he said this is 
going to be a long war; he said this will be a war against 
terrorism -- not against a people, but against terrorists.  And 
he said it's going to be long, it's -- he said it's going to be 
very difficult, he said, but we will prevail, otherwise our 
children and our grandchildren will live in terror, he said, so 
we will be victorious in this war.

	And he went around the room and he said, "Never forget," 
and he pointed to each of us -- he said, "Never forget.  Never 
forget."  He said, "I want you to know that I will never forget 
the events of what happened on this date yesterday."  He said, 
"Now, the nation will go on because the nation has to go on; 
people will get on with their life."  He said, "But I will never 
forget and you can never forget, because we are charged with the 
safety and security of the United States and other people in the 
world."  He said, "So we will never, ever forget what happened."  
He said, "We must be sure that we maintain our consistency and 
resolve for a long, long time until we are victorious in this 
struggle."

	So I want to pass on to you the same message:  Let's never 
forget.

	Navy League is very, very important, it's very important.  
It's the connection between our military and all of our great 
citizens.  And it's very important because you carry the message 
forward, and you're a connection with our military, you're a 
connection with our politicians, you're a connection with our 
people.  Never let people forget what happened.  It's critically 
important.

	Also, never forget all the people, all the people for 226 
years fought and defended our nation -- many of you here tonight 
of World War II and other of our nation's wars.  I mean, it's 
because of the resolve of individual people willing to go 
forward that our nation has survived all these years.  We've had 
threats to our nation before this, but Americans have always 
come forward to defend our way of life.  So never forget those 
people who went before us, and never forget these great 
Americans stationed today around the world, not just in 
Afghanistan, but around the world.  And by the way, it's not 
just in combat.  People put themselves in harm's way when they 
train for combat.  So as most of you know, this is a very 
hazardous occupation -- people who willingly come forward to do 
this.

	So never forget these great Americans every day out there, 
and never forget that united, we absolutely will prevail -- 
united as a nation, and united as a people around the world who 
cherish liberty and freedom.

	Listen, I appreciate everything you do.  I appreciate the 
great privilege and the great honor to be here.  And it's a 
great privilege and a great honor to be secretary of the Navy.  
And by the way, someone said to me, "What's it like to be 
secretary of the Navy?"  And I said, "Look, there's three jobs 
in the United States that anybody wants to have.  One is manager 
of the New York Yankees."  (Laughter.)  "One is coach of Notre 
Dame football.  And one is Secretary of the Navy."  (Laughter, 
applause.)

	I just want to tell you your Navy is going forward.  We 
have great leaders -- Admiral Vern Clark; the commandant, Jim 
Jones, General Jim Jones.  We're going forward.  This year we've 
built a foundation, I believe, for the Navy as we go forward.  
In the succeeding years, you will see us buying more ships and 
more airplanes as we recapitalize our Navy, but this year , God 
bless the president and the support of Secretary Rumsfeld and 
the Congress supporting them -- I mean, the budgets have gone 
up, gone up appreciably, significantly.  And a lot of that money 
went to our men and women in uniform.  But we've also now what I 
call filled all the buckets.  We're doing all the maintenance, 
we're doing all the repair. We're doing all the training, so we 
make sure all our men and women in uniform have everything they 
need out there today.  And as we go forward, we will now 
continue to recapitalize the fleet.

	So I will tell you the Navy's in good hands, in the good 
hands of our president, Secretary Rumsfeld, Admiral Clark, and 
all our leaders.  And I just want to say thank you for 
everything you do for our military people as part of your Navy 
and as part of this community.  So God bless you for everything 
you do and your families, because I know this is always a family 
affair.  God bless our great men and women in uniform.  God 
bless the United States of America.  And thank you for the honor 
and privilege of being here today.  Thank you very much.  
(Applause.)

                               -USN-