Bar Honors Retired General

Bar Honors Retired General

By David R. Corder

Associate Editor

Retired U.S. Army Gen. Tommy Franks loves his grandchildren. They affectionately call him ipooh.i So itis hard for this retired four-star general, who led the U.S. armed forces during Operation Iraqi Freedom, to understand how Islamic terrorists train their children as suicide bombers and praise their mortal sacrifice.

Such fundamentalist thinking illustrates why all Americans should now set aside their political differences in the wake of the recent general election and support the elected policymakers charged with protecting the national interest, Franks said in a speech at the Nov. 3 Hillsborough County Bar Association luncheon at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, downtown Tampa.

It was the clarity of Frankis message that earned him a standing ovation from nearly 400 lawyers, judges, politicians and guests who honored his selection as recipient of the associationis annual Liberty Bell award.

iThe electionis done now, letis all shoulder it and figure out where we are going to take it beyond the inaugural waltz,i he says. iLetis figure out what are we going to do in order to provide security o not just for ourselves but for our grandchildren, their grandchildren and generations yet unborn o so that the previous 225 years are replicated into the next couple of centuries and we have the freedoms we cherish.i

This is not a political question, Franks repeated. Anyone who thinks so should recall the 1983 bombing deaths of 241 U.S. marines in Beirut, Lebanon, the 1993 bombing of New Yorkis World Trade Center and the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole at the port of Aden, Yemen.

iWhen you kill Americans what that does is it puts into play a threat to a way of life, a way of life the Greatest Generation and many others have given us to enjoy in this country,i he says. iNot a single thing does this have to do with politics. O Or whether you in your heart feel badly today because you wanted so desperately to change the direction of our country. Thatis not what this is about. What this is about is a threat to our way of life.i

In other bar news, the group anniounced it is naming its new office at the Tampa Stetson law campus after the late Chester H. Ferguson, a co-founder of Macfarlane Ferguson & McMullen. Fergusonis family donated $1.5 million for the naming rights to the building.