The stirring speeches of yesteryear inspired us then, and still do. In times of grave danger, great leaders rallied their nations with appeals to duty and visions of victory.

“With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph — so help us God,” FDR said after Pearl Harbor.

“We shall not fail or falter; we shall not weaken or tire. Neither the sudden shock of battle nor the long-drawn trials of vigilance and exertion will wear us down. Give us the tools and we will finish the job,” Winston Churchill said in 1941.

“I have full confidence in your courage and devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory!” Gen. Dwight Eisenhower said in his D-Day address to Allied troops.

Then there is Barack Obama. After the Islamic State won major battles in Iraq and Syria last week, he said: “I don’t think we’re losing.”

Oy, how the mighty have fallen.

Commanders and commanders in chief always spoke of victory because nothing less was acceptable. When peace was not an option, triumph was the only reason to fight.

Obama has put himself at odds not just with that history, but with the very concept of national leadership. Nowhere has his failing been as obvious as in the fight against Islamic terrorism.

Beginning with his foolish refusal to concede the Islamic roots of Islamic terror, Obama’s uncertain course created the vacuum filled by the Islamic State. Brutally determined to build a modern caliphate, it now controls about half of Syria and, after seizing the major Iraqi city of Ramadi, controls a huge portion of that country as well.

It was after those shocking gains that Obama made his bizarre observation about not losing. That seems to be good enough for him.

“We’re eight months into what we’ve always anticipated to be a multiyear campaign,” he told The Atlantic magazine, calling the Ramadi loss a “tactical setback.”

A “campaign” for what? A “setback” from what?

Nothing has changed — except the Islamic State is proving his critics right with its expansion. And not just in territory, but in money, arms and manpower.

Obama never laid out a clear vision, because he doesn’t have one. He pulled all American troops out of Iraq in 2011, and claimed credit for ending the war.

That helped get him re-elected, and he was dismissive of the Islamic State even early last year, calling the terror group a “JV squad.” He was warned then he was wrong, yet it wasn’t until Americans James Foley and Steven Sotloff were beheaded last summer that Obama changed his tune.

Yet the pinprick airstrikes he ordered were more about placating outraged public opinion than making a military difference. Despite his saying the goal was to “degrade and ultimately destroy the terrorist group,” analysts scoffed that the means he offered were too puny to achieve the ends.

Nothing has changed — except the Islamic State is proving his critics right with its expansion. And not just in territory, but in money, arms and manpower.

So much so that in its propaganda magazine, the group claims it might be able to buy a nuclear weapon within a year. “It’s the sum of all fears for Western intelligence agencies and it’s infinitely more possible today than it was just one year ago,” the magazine boasts. “And if not a nuke, what about a few thousand tons of ammonium nitrate explosive? That’s easy enough to make.”

The leaders of the Islamic State are madmen, but they have a vision for victory, and a mountain of corpses in two countries to prove it.

The consequences of Obama’s fecklessness fall most heavily on Muslims, Christians and Kurds in Iraq and Syria. But it will not end there.

The Islamic State wants to attack America and, as its magazine says, “do something big, something that would make any past operation look like a squirrel shoot . . . something truly epic.”

Is that what it will take to wake Obama?

Strange standoff for NYPD

It is said that politics makes strange bedfellows, but they don’t get any stranger than the three-way tangle over the size and mission of the NYPD.

In one corner is City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, who wants to add 1,000 cops, costing nearly $100 million a year, while also pushing to decriminalize quality-of-life crimes.

In another corner is top cop Bill Bratton, who wants those 1,000 additional cops but wants to keep criminal penalties for public urination, fare-beating and other violations.

Off in the ether, Mayor Bill de Blasio doesn’t want to add any cops while saying he’s mostly with Bratton on quality-of-life policing.

The standoff is remarkable on several fronts. Bratton is challenging the mayor and making his case to the public and the council for more troops. That kind of end run used to be common at City Hall, with commissioners who report to the mayor lobbying the council for more money than the mayor wanted to spend. Rudy Giuliani banned the practice, saying the administration would speak with one voice — his. Mike Bloomberg retained that common-sense approach.

But de Blasio has a helter-skelter management style and zero credibility on public safety. Bratton’s maneuver exploits the gaps, but sets up a confrontation with his boss.

Indeed, the mayor used Bratton’s near-elimination of stop-and-frisk as a reason why there is no need for more cops, saying there isn’t as much for them to do. Touché!

As for Mark-Viverito, it’s not clear why she wants more cops. She doesn’t like them, and it sounds like she wants more officers to stand around and make fewer arrests. If she wants blue flowerpots, she could go to a florist and get them for a lot less than $100 million.

Slick Willy (and Hilly)

Reader Ronald Novrit wonders why the Clintons always get away with it.

“It was obvious since they emerged from Arkansas that they were on the make for cash,” he writes. “Now that he is the ex-president and influence-peddler extraordinaire, why isn’t anyone investigating their phony foundation? In New Jersey, Democrats spent three years and tens of millions of dollars investigating a traffic jam. Are the Republicans that afraid of the Clintons?”

Don’t wait for this train

Lies, damn lies, statistics — and MTA promises.

In a prediction reeking of government-speak, the transit agency’s capital construction boss said he’s 75 percent sure the Second Avenue Subway will open on schedule by December 2016.

Count me as 100 percent skeptical.

It’s not just that planning for the project goes back to 1929. Or that voters approved at least three separate bond acts to fund the line, with one critic calling it “the most famous thing that’s never been built.”

The problem is that the MTA always over-promises and under-delivers. Phase One of the project, from East 96th Street and Second Avenue to East 63rd and Lexington Avenue, was supposed to open last year. And then this year.

Now it’s next year.

Here’s a safe bet: Completion will be pushed back again. That’s the MTA way.