War & Peace Quote by Adam Schiff

There’s a lawyerly snap to Schiff’s opening move: “In fact, the converse is true.” It’s not just disagreement; it’s a cross-examination. He signals that someone, somewhere, is minimizing or complicating the moral stakes, and he’s arriving to reverse the burden of proof. The sentence is built like a hinge: first, elevate the moment (“not seen since World War II”), then narrow to the non-negotiable (“we cannot afford to dissemble”).

Invoking World War II is doing heavy political work. It’s the American origin myth of moral clarity: the last time the country supposedly understood evil without caveats, mobilized without endless procedural delay, and led without apology. By tying the present to that era, Schiff is trying to launder contemporary ambiguity into a familiar narrative of necessity. The subtext is that hesitation isn’t prudence; it’s a failure of character. “Dissemble” is a particularly pointed verb here, implying not mere ignorance but strategic evasion by officials who know better and choose convenient fog.

Context matters: Schiff’s public persona is bound up with accountability politics, especially in the post-9/11 and post-Iraq landscape where “moral leadership” has been both demanded of the U.S. and doubted by much of the world. He’s attempting to reclaim the moral high ground by framing truth-telling about atrocities as national self-interest: integrity as a strategic asset. The line is less about abstract ethics than about disciplining a foreign policy class prone to euphemism. Call it what it is, he argues, or forfeit the right to lead.