An excerpt from a presidential address:

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

This much we pledge--and more.

To those old allies whose cultural and spiritual origins we share, we pledge the loyalty of faithful friends. United there is little we cannot do in a host of cooperative ventures. Divided there is little we can do--for we dare not meet a powerful challenge at odds and split asunder.

To those new states whom we welcome to the ranks of the free, we pledge our word that one form of colonial control shall not have passed away merely to be replaced by a far more iron tyranny. We shall not always expect to find them supporting our view. But we shall always hope to find them strongly supporting their own freedom--and to remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.

And in a different speech:

Neither the United States of America nor the world community of nations can tolerate deliberate deception and offensive threats on the part of any nation, large or small. We no longer live in a world where only the actual firing of weapons represents a sufficient challenge to a nation's security to constitute maximum peril

Friend or Foe?   Pay any price for Liberty?  Loyalty to "faithful" friends?   Preemptive force?   Sounds a lot like Dubya, doesn't it?  Astute readers are probably quite aware that these words are actually JFK's and come from his inaugural address.

I randomly caught some excerpts from JFK's speech while channel surfing through the History Channel (I have to plug this network any chance I get - they're AMAZING) and was blown away by how much the courage and conviction resonates today.

I argued a while back that many of the foriegn policy goals of the evil NeoCons are actually regurgitated Kennedy-esque, "liberals on the right side of History" goals.   What would JFK think of Howard Dean today?