War & Peace Quote by Norm Coleman

Coleman’s line is built to do more than condemn terrorism; it drafts the listener into a particular kind of civic posture. By insisting terrorism is “at its heart, at its evil heart, a psychological war,” he shifts the battlefield from bodies to morale. That move matters politically: if the central target is “spirit” and “resolve,” then the appropriate response becomes emotional discipline as much as physical security. Fear isn’t just a reaction; it’s the enemy’s main weapon, and the public is told it can either deny or amplify that weapon.

The phrase “lose-lose situation” is the real engine here. It smuggles in a theory of how democracies get manipulated: react too aggressively and you erode your own values, liberties, and legitimacy; react too weakly and you invite further violence and vulnerability. Coleman is framing terrorism as a trap designed to make any response look like defeat. That framing pre-justifies hard decisions while also warning against overreach, a useful rhetorical flexibility for a politician speaking in the post-9/11 security climate.

“Let us never forget” functions as a collective oath. It’s not an argument so much as a ritual of unity, implying that disagreement or panic is itself a form of surrender. The subtext is a civics lesson delivered as moral clarity: your job, citizen, is to refuse the psychological script. In that sense, the quote is less about describing terrorism than about governing its aftershocks: keeping public anger, policy, and identity from being steered by people who want America to injure itself while trying to protect itself.