Politics & Power Quote by Rosa DeLauro

“Stopped to remember” is carefully staged language: a collective pause that implies unanimity, solemnity, and moral clarity. DeLauro is speaking in 2006, when the Iraq War had moved from shock-and-awe certainty to grinding occupation, rising casualties, and growing public skepticism. In that atmosphere, memory becomes a political tool. She isn’t relitigating the decision to invade; she’s protecting the emotional high ground before the argument even begins.

The line’s real work happens in the ordering. “First and foremost” establishes a hierarchy of acceptable feelings: before anger, before doubt, before policy critique, there is tribute. That sequence is a shield against the era’s most common rhetorical cudgel: that opposition to the war equals disrespect for the troops. By foregrounding “selflessness, patriotism and heroism,” DeLauro aligns herself with an unassailable civic virtue set, clearing space to criticize the war’s management (or justification) without being cast as anti-military.

The inclusion of “National Guard and Reserves” is not incidental. Those forces were stretched and repeatedly deployed in ways many Americans experienced locally: coworkers, neighbors, parents pulled from civilian life. Naming them broadens the war from a distant battlefield to a domestic disruption, a reminder that sacrifice isn’t abstract or confined to an all-volunteer warrior class.

Subtext: the country owes service members more than applause. The sentence reads like an opening move in a larger case that accountability is patriotic too, and that honoring troops can’t mean insulating leaders from scrutiny.