(Warning - I think this is the longest post to date on this blog. Hope you brought some snacks…)
Cindy Sheehan has decided that she is retiring as the face of the angry anti-war left. Below is the text from her blog post, with liberal plentiful interruptions from me.
I have endured a lot of smear and hatred since Casey was killed…
Really? Casey's heroic death caused people to turn on his mother?
...and especially since I became the so-called “Face” of the American anti-war movement.
Ah - now we're getting somewhere. That is precisely why you have endured a lot of smear and hatred - but, I'd venture to say, not nearly as much as the man currently in the White House, faithfully executing his duties as Commander in Chief. Just a guess…
Especially since I renounced any tie I have remaining with the Democratic Party, I have been further trashed on such “liberal blogs” as the Democratic Underground.
Yes, these liberals are a fickle sort. There's a reason a certain leading conservative voice calls their publicity machine the “Drive-By Media”. They'll use whatever they can for as long as it's useful, and then dump them like yesterday's garbage.
Being called an “attention whore” and being told “good riddance” are some of the more milder rebukes.
It must hurt to have two sides that are bitterly against each other both think of you that way. Though, if you inspire this much animosity from such diametrically-opposed quarters, maybe you need to reevaluate your views.
I have come to some heartbreaking conclusions this Memorial Day Morning. These are not spur of the moment reflections, but things I have been meditating on for about a year now. The conclusions that I have slowly and very reluctantly come to are very heartbreaking to me.
Introspection is often painful - let's see what you came up with…
The first conclusion is that I was the darling of the so-called left as long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican Party. Of course, I was slandered and libeled by the right as a “tool” of the Democratic Party. This label was to marginalize me and my message. How could a woman have an original thought, or be working outside of our “two-party” system?
“Slander” and “libel” are not possible when one is telling the truth. And, whether you realized it or not, you were being used as a “tool” to further the aims of the Democrat party. It had nothing to do with marginalizing your message - it had to do with your message being flat-out wrong.
And how do you expect us to believe you were trying to work “outside” the two-party system, when you spoke out for the Democrats?
However, when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the “left” started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used. I guess no one paid attention to me when I said that the issue of peace and people dying for no reason is not a matter of “right or left”, but “right and wrong.”
Ooh, look - a catchphrase! You just don't understand peace. Peace is what comes after victory. When everyone lays down their guns, bad people (and yes, Cindy, there are bad people in this world) realize that, if they pick theirs back up, they have an instant advantage. This necessitates the good people pick up their guns to defend themselves. Violence does beget violence; but may I remind you who it was that started this? Did a bunch of Christians fly commercial airliners filled with innocent Afghanis into the political and business centers of Kabul? Or did Iraqi-trained Islamic extremists fly the planes into the United States' political and business centers?
The people are only dying “for no reason” if we listen to the rest of your drivel. War has solved a lot of issues in our world, and it will solve this one as well. The cowards and the enemy are the ones who want us to stop fighting - that's the only way they can “win.”
I am deemed a radical because I believe that partisan politics should be left to the wayside when hundreds of thousands of people are dying for a war based on lies that is supported by Democrats and Republican alike.
The Democrats don't support the war, and their claims of supporting the troops ring hollow. They're just too spineless to stand up to a President because they know, even if only subconsciously, that it is absolutely critical that we win this war. With our last two major armed conflicts, Vietnam and Gulf War I, we showed that we were willing to pull out before the job is done. We do that a third time, we're done.
It amazes me that people who are sharp on the issues and can zero in like a laser beam on lies, misrepresentations, and political expediency when it comes to one party refuse to recognize it in their own party. Blind party loyalty is dangerous whatever side it occurs on.
I actually agree with the last sentence. But you talk about political expediency, which party is it that believes you should take a poll before doing anything? And, there are people within the Democrat party that are absolutely seething over the way the war spending bill has gone. You know what? Those are the very people who are making it impossible to get a Democrat elected to the Presidency. The primary, fringe voters elect the person who believes in their view of things; come national election time, they are easily painted as pandering to their base. Sure, Republicans campaign to their base too, but their base's view is much more palatable to the American public than the other.
(Man, I hope the Democrats don't read this… I was hoping they'd keep it up…)
People of the world look on us Americans as jokes because we allow our political leaders so much murderous latitude and if we don't find alternatives to this corrupt “two” party system our Representative Republic will die and be replaced with what we are rapidly descending into with nary a check or balance: a fascist corporate wasteland.
“People of the world” do not look on us as jokes. Sure, there are some countries that do, but those are usually the snooty ones who need to pay more attention to their own business. Besides, when did we suborn our sovereignty to foreign opinion? If this country is so bad, why do we have 12 million illegal aliens clamoring to stay?
I am demonized because I don't see party affiliation or nationality when I look at a person, I see that person's heart. If someone looks, dresses, acts, talks and votes like a Republican, then why do they deserve support just because he/she calls him/herself a Democrat?
Hah! That's just the thing. The Democrats in Congress right now are what Democrats are! They're fickle, and they govern with polls. Polls tell them that if they cut off funding for the war, hanging our troops out to dry, that they will experience defeat on such a scale that we might morph into a one-party system. I don't see how that demonizes you - consider yourself enlightened. Now you know what frustrates us conservatives about the current Democrat party (and many within the Republican ranks as well).
I have also reached the conclusion that if I am doing what I am doing because I am an “attention whore” then I really need to be committed.
Welcome, ma'am - here's your white coat. I'll help you get the sleeves fastened in back.
I have invested everything I have into trying to bring peace with justice to a country that wants neither.
We want both. It's a shame this isn't actually a dialogue, because I'd love to hear how laying down our guns would bring us either of those results.
If an individual wants both, then normally he/she is not willing to do more than walk in a protest march or sit behind his/her computer criticizing others.
You knock computer users, but post your “See ya, bye” tome on your blog. Pot, meet kettle…
I have spent every available cent I got from the money a “grateful” country gave me when they killed my son and every penny that I have received in speaking or book fees since then. I have sacrificed a 29 year marriage and have traveled for extended periods of time away from Casey's brother and sisters and my health has suffered and my hospital bills from last summer (when I almost died) are in collection…
Your money is yours to do with it as you see fit. But don't come whining to us about the consequences of your bad choices. Choosing a cause over a 29-year marriage is foolish. Leaving your kids for “extended periods of time” is deplorable. And, if you have hospital bills in collection, maybe you should take some of that book money and pay them.
...because I have used all my energy trying to stop this country from slaughtering innocent human beings.
Collateral damage is a reality of any war. I don't have hard numbers here, but I'd venture to say that the “innocent to combatant” ratio is one of the best in any war fought in our world to date.
I have been called every despicable name that small minds can think of and have had my life threatened many times.
Not that you should have your life threatened for holding unpopular views, but when those views go from unpopular to treasonous, and the penalty for treason is death… Well, you might look inward to see where some of these threats are coming from.
The most devastating conclusion that I reached this morning, however, was that Casey did indeed die for nothing. His precious lifeblood drained out in a country far away from his family who loves him, killed by his own country which is beholden to and run by a war machine that even controls what we think. I have tried every since he died to make his sacrifice meaningful.
Casey did not die for nothing. And, while your intentions may be as you said in that last sentence, the reality is that you have been trying ever since he died to make his sacrifice meaningless. You are the one who keep saying that Casey died for nothing, while the rest of this country is grateful for his heroism and his ultimate sacrifice. His was one name that came to my mind yesterday when I thought of the names (that I know) of people who have died in this current conflict, Pat Tillman being the other.
Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives. It is so painful to me to know that I bought into this system for so many years and Casey paid the price for that allegiance. I failed my boy and that hurts the most.
Why should the American people care about the war, when all they hear from you, the Democrats, and the media is how evil we are for being there in the first place?!?! Can you not see your role in this self-fulfilling prophecy?
I have also tried to work within a peace movement that often puts personal egos above peace and human life. This group won't work with that group; he won't attend an event if she is going to be there; and why does Cindy Sheehan get all the attention anyway? It is hard to work for peace when the very movement that is named after it has so many divisions.
Welcome to modern-day activism - angst for sale to the highest bidder. The bigger the name recognition, the higher the bid.
Our brave young men and women in Iraq have been abandoned there indefinitely by their cowardly leaders who move them around like pawns on a chessboard of destruction and the people of Iraq have been doomed to death and fates worse than death by people worried more about elections than people.
Then why not turn them loose to end this thing in 6 months, so they can come home? Oh wait - we're too busy trying to get funding for the existing troops. If we turned them loose, why, we'd need more money for munitions - and the company that makes it might make a little bit of a profit! Oh no! We can't do that!
If we fought this war the way we fought World War II, we'd already be talking about it in the past tense.
However, in five, ten, or fifteen years, our troops will come limping home in another abject defeat and ten or twenty years from then, our children's children will be seeing their loved ones die for no reason, because their grandparents also bought into this corrupt system.
The system isn't corrupt. I'll grant you that there may be some corrupt people in the system, but the system itself (our nation) is the greatest system ever conceived.
George Bush will never be impeached because if the Democrats dig too deeply, they may unearth a few skeletons in their own graves and the system will perpetuate itself in perpetuity.
I would certainly hope that a sitting President wouldn't be impeached for daring to defend his country. But, isn't it your side's turn? (I guess that, maybe, if our current President were getting sexual favors in the Oval Office, he wouldn't have time to order the surge?)
I am going to take whatever I have left and go home. I am going to go home and be a mother to my surviving children and try to regain some of what I have lost. I will try to maintain and nurture some very positive relationships that I have found in the journey that I was forced into when Casey died and try to repair some of the ones that have fallen apart since I began this single-minded crusade to try and change a paradigm that is now, I am afraid, carved in immovable, unbendable and rigidly mendacious marble.
I know you will never see this, but this is exactly what you're advocating we do in Iraq. You gave everything you had, yet you came up short. Rather than redouble your efforts, you're quitting. Do you feel victorious? It certainly doesn't sound like it.
I'm glad that some of us believe in defending our country more than you believe in your pacifism.
Camp Casey has served its purpose. It's for sale. Anyone want to buy five beautiful acres in Crawford, Texas ? I will consider any reasonable offer. I hear George Bush will be moving out soon, too...which makes the property even more valuable.
Take the money you get from it and pay those medical bills - don't donate it to moveon.org…
This is my resignation letter as the “face” of the American anti-war movement. This is not my “Checkers” moment, because I will never give up trying to help people in the world who are harmed by the empire of the good old US of A, but I am finished working in, or outside of this system. This system forcefully resists being helped and eats up the people who try to help it. I am getting out before it totally consumes me or anymore people that I love and the rest of my resources.
Let me translate those first few sentences. “I'm quitting. Well, I'm not really quitting - I'll try to bring as much aid and comfort to our enemies as possible, since we're so bad and evil.” And you wonder why people are upset with you? And again, you reveal that your belief in your cause does not go nearly as deep as those who willingly give their lives to preserve our freedom.
Good-bye America ...you are not the country that I love and I finally realized no matter how much I sacrifice, I can't make you be that country unless you want it.
Honesty is good for the soul. You don't love this country - that's fine (freedom and all that). Will you be putting feet to this belief, or will you continue to live here, reaping the benefits of those (including your son) who died to preserve your freedom to hate it? And yes, as a whole, we don't want to realize your vision of our country.
It's up to you now.
And thank you for getting out of the way, so we can get about the work that needs to be done.
Mary Katherine Ham is a video blogger at TownHall.com who regularly posts her HamNation episodes at YouTube.com. Her latest is pure comic genius - "I Do Not Like to Hear Good News". Viewing it is a well-invested 5 minutes.
(Hat Tip - Emperor Darth Misha I of the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler)
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
10:54 pm
Daniel J. Summers
Today, we discuss an article published in Stars and Stripes entitled "Air Force: Shift in funds may affect payroll". Let me preface this by saying that, although this may appear to be a fisking, it's not - I'm simply using this as a launching pad for saying things that have needed to be said for a long time. With that in mind, look at the selective quotes below…
The Air Force said Wednesday that it might not be able to pay its airmen in the coming months if the Pentagon is forced to shift some $800 million to the Army to fund the war in Iraq.
The Army announced this week that it will slow spending and prioritize repairs to equipment as it waits for Congress to review emergency funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition, the Pentagon has asked Congress for the OK to shift $1.6 billion in funds meant for the Navy and Air Force to pay the Army's operating expenses, according to an Army news release.
“The Air Force believes this is a prudent measure and expects that the funds will be restored quickly so that military payroll will not be disrupted,” Araujo said in an e-mail response to Stars and Stripes.
...
“Bottom line: we need the bill to be passed quickly to avoid any further impacts to readiness,” she wrote.
Think about what that says for just a minute. The Army is so strapped for cash that they're considering dipping into the Air Force's payroll to fund their equipment repairs. Why in the world would they be doing that? The clue is in the first sentence of the second quote. They are waiting on Congress to pass the emergency funding bill.
I have about had it with this new Congress. They are the most power-hungry group of people I have ever seen. The President requested this legislation February 5th. February 5th! If continuing stalemate on April 24th and beyond is considered “emergency,” let us all pray that neither Harry Reid nor Nancy Pelosi ever become the fire chief in your town.
And speaking of Reid and Pelosi, let's take a look at the so-called “leadership” of this new Congress. Over on the Senate side, they're led by Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV). While some, through their tough, dogged leadership, may think it positive to have the nickname “Dirty Harry,” Sen. Reid has earned his moniker. Though you wouldn't know it from the nightly news, he earned over $1M from a land sale that was, to put it as nicely as possible, legally dubious. This past week, he made the statement that the war in Iraq was not just unwinnable, it was already lost. (Though he clarified what he meant by saying that the military portion was won long ago, I have to agree with James Taranto of OpinionJournal.com (fourth article, entitled “The Old Green Lady”)…
Haven't we been hearing for years that President Bush was an arrogant fool for appearing on a ship with a banner saying “Mission Accomplished”?
But we can't leave the House of Representatives out, now can we? Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is the current Speaker of the House. For those of you not up on your Constitution, this means that if President Bush and Vice President Cheney were to meet their demise, she would be the President. (I'll pause while the shuddering stops…) Speaker Pelosi decided that, rather than leave international diplomacy to the Executive branch, where it should be, she would rather take it upon herself to begin visiting foreign heads of state. Of course, this trip started with Syria - a state sponsor of terrorism with whom we are currently already working. I swear, sometimes I think that Democrats have never met a terrorist they didn't like; either that, or they so hate President Bush that they're falling into the “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” mentality. Either way, it's dangerous for our nation. And, when the House recently enacted a minimum wage increase, American Samoa was exempted. Why was that? Seems StarKist tuna, a subsidiary of San Francisco-based Del Monte, employs nearly 75% of the island's workforce. Rep. Pelosi's district includes San Francisco. And the Democrats have the nerve to say the Republicans have a “culture of corruption”?!?!?
This is the same problem that is now plaguing the emergency funding bill, flailing nearly three months after it was requested. Congress has passed a bill - but it was so loaded with pork that neither Jews nor Muslims would come within a mile of it! “Bringing home the bacon” has always been an art form in Washington, D. C.; but to stock up on the backs of the troops on the ground is beyond reprehensible. Coming back to the article that started this, the situation is so bad that the Army is considering borrowing from its sister services. But, pork is not the only thing holding up this bill.
The Bush administration has requested an additional $100 billion in war funding, but the request has stalled as Congress tied those funds to a deadline for withdrawing troops from Iraq. President Bush has vowed to veto such a bill, leaving the Army with little funds to carry out its mission in Iraq.
The timetable! Not only does this Congress want to usurp foreign policy and diplomacy, they want to usurp the Commander-in-Chief duties as well! I applaud any vetoes of the bill that contain these treasonous, un-Constitutional provisions, and I hope that all the blame for the funding delay falls squarely on the shoulders of those responsible - the power-hungry, overreaching Democrats in Congress.
But hey - if we miss a paycheck, we can just tighten our belts, right? Here are some of the money-saving initiatives the Army is considering…
Among the belt-tightening measures being considered by the Army are a freeze on new civilian hiring from outside the Army and laying off temporary employees, the statement said.
...
According to the Army statement, beginning in mid-April, the Army will slow the purchase of repair parts and other supplies, relying instead on existing inventory to keep equipment operational. Priority will be given to repair and refurbishment of immediately needed war-fighting equipment, while training and other nonmission critical equipment repair will be deferred, officials said.
...
In addition, the purchase of day-to-day supplies with government charge cards will be restricted, nonessential travel will be postponed or canceled, and shipment of equipment and supplies will be restricted or deferred altogether, unless needed immediately for war efforts, the statement said.
Well, that doesn't sound too bad, right? “Nonmission critical,” “nonessential” things will be canceled, while “immediate needs” will be addressed. But in the lingo of the military, the things that are being foregone are not “nonessential.” Many things that are considered non-essential are essential when viewed long-term. What the Army is saying is that they're basically going to let everything slip, things go unfixed, and soldiers go untrained so that they can afford the immediate need. This is not sustainable - and, the Army went on to say (emphasis mine)…
...even with these spending restrictions and the possible shift of $1.6 billion from the Air Force and Navy, funds are sufficient to keep operations running only until the end of June.
So, we've dropped all the replenishment and taken the Air Force's and Navy's payroll money, and we've only bought 2 months. This is absolutely despicable. Congress needs to get off its collective duff and get the military the money it needs.
I'll close with this. In this country, we have always disagreed about when, where, and to what extent our military should get involved. Prior to Vietnam, though, the side that didn't get their way shut up and supported the troops and their mission, through to its completion. In Vietnam, this changed; and our government's failure to prosecute treason back then is one reason the Democrats are so bold today. Whether they actually want America to fail, or they just want President Bush to fail so badly that they don't care if he takes America down with him, they have now invested themselves in our defeat. If this isn't treason, I don't know what is.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
10:20 pm
Daniel J. Summers
Several things are converging at once, and I believe they're related. Tuesday was a busy day, so I'll explain each, and then how they could be.
First, the hard-working 101st Congress started their 4-day work-week, after taking Monday off for the BCS championship game. (They should have taken Tuesday off instead of Monday, so they could sleep in Tuesday morning after the late finish.) This is the now Democrat-controlled House and Senate - the legislative body we'll have to deal with for the next two years.
Second, we have Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), on the heels of his joint letter with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) expressing opposition to increasing troop levels, announced that there will be a symbolic resolution voted on in the Senate next week opposing any escalation in the war in Iraq. (This is in the 4th paragraph under the heading “Dems considering options”.) That link also has a full story on the bill that Senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy (D-MA) introduced to require Congressional approval for any troop increases in Iraq. This bill is a clear usurpation of executive power, and will not pass muster - however, its introduction and the accompanying rhetoric sends a message. (Mr. Kennedy also gave a speech at the National Press Club in which he was highly critical of the President and his Iraq policy. While I would love to give his speech the proper fisking it deserves (and may if I have the time), I'll quote one of the more egregious portions here…)
But I do not retreat from the view that Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam. At the critical moment in the war on terrorism, the administration turned away from pursuing Osama bin Laden and made the catastrophic choice instead that has bogged down America in an endless quagmire in Iraq.
(APPLAUSE)
Our misguided resort to war has created much more and much more intense anti-American feeling than Osama bin Laden ever dreamed of. And the sooner we reverse that distressing trend, the better.
I am convinced that John Kerry could have worked with the international community to end that war and bring our troops home with honor.
Third, the first open fighting of the year broke out in Baghdad, where Iraqi forces went after an insurgent stronghold after the insurgents killed over 100 people. The Iraqi forces called for US backup, and together they prevailed, but not after 10-hour firefight.
Are these three things related? If they are, there are two different ways that it could be. The most likely, and the way I believe these are related, is that the militant element in Iraq is emboldened by this new leadership. They hear the rhetoric from our newly-elected leaders, and they sense that the will of the American people may be waning. They feel that if they step up their attacks, and engage in open hostilities, that they will help those in this country who want us to pull out. We've known for a long time that terrorists prefer Democrats - remember Osama bin Laden's tape before the 2004 elections, threatening states that voted for President Bush? If this is what this turns out to be, I pray that we have the will to fight off this renewed zeal on the part of the terrorists.
Another option is that the Congressional Democrats are using the fighting in Iraq as a political issue. (Of course, the media goes right along with them - look at the first paragraph of this story about Sen. Tim Johnson's emergency brain surgery.) The worse the war goes, the better the Democrats look. I think that a lot of them are not realizing what this means. The Democrats have positioned themselves on the wrong side of this issue. If America loses the war, they win - their prognostications of doom and gloom will have been proved to be true, and they can give the rest of us a big “I told you so.” However, if America wins, they lose - and they will only be madder, and more resentful; they will never admit that our nation did the right thing by going into Iraq. Of course, in a way, they've already gotten a small victory; at the beginning, I never would have used the term “if America wins,” it would have been “when America wins.”
Where is the truth? Are these related at all? If they're not directly related, then they are at least mutually beneficial - which should be enough for any of us that love truth and freedom (and don't want the blood of our brothers in arms to have been spilt in vain) to know what side we should be on. Contrary to what Congress seems to think, the American people do not elect and seat 435 "Commander-in-Chief"s every two years - we elect one every four years. For the next two years, there is one Commander in Chief, with a new Secretary of Defense. If the Democrats have ideas for how to win the war, then let them work together with the administration so that we will prevail. If all they have is grandstanding, naysaying, and threats of treasonous proportions, then they need to sit down and shut up.
Why would a patriotic American position themselves so that they are only validated if America loses? The short answer - they wouldn't.
I found an excellent series of posts entitled “What is a Liberal?” In the first installment, Mr. Freeberg sets up three scenarios, then describes what the liberal and conservative solution would be to each. In parts two and three, he recounts reactions and things that have happened since his initial post. (Part III has some language in it that may be offensive - you have been warned.)
Thursday, August 25, 2005
10:00 pm
Daniel J. Summers
Before I get into this, a side note - Jason Deal, a young man in our church, had a really bad ATV accident last week. He is currently paralyzed, although his back is not severed. Over the next few weeks, the doctors will be able to assess the nerve damage he sustained, and over the next half year, they will know if he will be able to regain any movement. To keep folks informed, his recovery is being blogged at jasondeal.blogspot.com. Take a moment to pray for him and his recovery.
Dear Cindy Sheehan,
First of all, congratulations - you have managed to illustrate everything that is wrong with the anti-war movement in one convenient package. Your pain is understandable, and I am truly sorry that your son was lost in the War on Terror. But, as any good counselor will tell you, there is a constructive way to deal with loss, and there is a destructive way.
Ma'am, your son Casey died as a hero. He was, by all accounts, a great young man who believed in giving of himself for others. I'm sure he learned this ethic while growing up in your home. Would he be happy with your self-serving stand - camping out across the street from the Commander in Chief while he's on vacation? What would he say to you if he could come back and see you trying to turn his selfless act of heroism into a self-aggrandizing vendetta of victimization?
Your demand to meet with the President is quite rich - especially given the fact that you've already met him once. He even kissed you! Back then, you said he was serious about winning the war, and you knew he was a man of faith. What's changed? Besides, you can't really expect him to set a new precedent along the lines of “anyone who comes and camps out across from the ranch can come talk”, do you?
You are letting your grief color your view of what is going on in this world. We are engaged in a global struggle against an enemy that has no qualms about launching a stealth attack on a civilian target whenever they feel like it. Even you, ma'am, are an infidel to them - especially as a divorcee. The enemy sees you as part of the problem - and we who believe that Operation Iraqi Freedom is the right thing to do to protect our nation also see you as part of the problem. This may explain why you've been associating yourself with groups like MoveOn.org.
The true irony in all this is that your son died to protect your freedom to do exactly what you're doing now. Few other countries (and the leaders of those countries) would extend to you the courtesy of allowing your protest at the edge of their personal property. But freedom is a two-edged sword - and this means that I also have the right to tell you that you are doing more harm than good. You've said that the war is not “worth it”, even that this countryis not worth dying for.
And, a word to your supporters, specifically Maureen Dowd. The moral authority of mothers who bury children killed in Iraq is not, as you claim, absolute. Let me explain about children - God blesses you with them, and you have approximately 18 years to instill in them the values that you feel are worth passing from one generation to another. Once they reach that age, though, they become adults. Mothers and fathers are not “sending their kids off to war.” Casey Sheehan, along with every other active duty, reserve, and guard member (a group which includes me), chose to join the military as adults. We pledged to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, and to obey the orders of those appointed over us. Each of us has different reasons we made that decision - but, when it comes down to it, we have the integrity and honor to follow through on that commitment.
Ms. Sheehan, please go home. Go home to the children you still have with you. Celebrate the life you have. Celebrate Casey's life, his giving spirit, and the cause for which he chose to risk his life. If this country is distasteful to you, look into Canada, Britain, or Australia. (Or, better yet, look into Cuba, and see how our nation looks then.) Stop allowing anti-war and anti-Bush groups to exploit your loss and our nation's loss. And, finally, stop giving our enemy a morale boost. All of us who are still trying to win this war would greatly appreciate it.
Karl Rove – Allegations are flying about Karl Rove revealing a CIA agent's name to a reporter. As is standard procedure for the left, facts don't particularly matter. Rove did not reveal a name, only that Joe Wilson's wife was an employee at the CIA. Even if he had, she is not a covert agent, so laws against naming her identity do not apply. However, none of these facts are keeping the Democrats (and their more-than-willing accomplices in the press) from mounting what can only be described as a feeding frenzy, calling for Karl Rove to be fired.
The media is behaving particularly despicably in this. Check out the transcript of a recent press briefing at the White House. This is nothing short of desperation, and they know it. If Karl Rove were guilty, they would just be quiet and wait for the indictment - the longer Rove is around, the better for them. Of course, this is the way Democrats work. Remember, when George W. Bush (R) was certified as the winner of Florida's Presidential election, it was the Supreme Court enforcing existing law; when Christine Gregoire (D) was declared governor of Washington, the Washington Supreme Court invented new law.
Iraq - If the Democrats had to donate $1 to the Federal government every time they said something like “everyone knows there's no link between Iraq and Al-qaeda,” we wouldn't have a budget deficit. This technique is called the “Big Lie” - repeat it often enough, and people start to believe it. However, saying it three times does not make it so (unlike certain TV shows). The Weekly Standard published an article this past week called "The Mother of All Connections," that details the links between the administration of Saddam Hussein and the terror network of Osama bin Laden. It's quite lengthy, but well-researched, and demonstrates conclusively that Iraq was the next stop in the war on terror, and not just for the benefits of introducing freedom to the Middle East.
“Support the Troops” - This is another fave from the anti-Bush left. Even John Kerry got in on this when he was running for president. The logic is basically summed up like this - “Support the troops - bring them home.” This sounds good, all nice and touchy-feely (once again, the left's preference for feelings over facts is evident), but would actually be the worst possible thing to do at this point. Our nation's troops have worked hard to get Iraq and Afghanistan free, and we're still working to get them trained on maintaining their freedom. Pulling out now would be very disrespectful to the over 1,000 folks who have died in this war to date. (Again, why should that surprise me?) Think about it this way [ when a player on a sports team becomes injured, do they tell the other players "Hey man, we just need to quit - this is too dangerous!"? Of course not. We've seen, time and time again, these guys saying “You guys stay in it!” Seeing this through to its successful completion is the only way to honor and, yes, support, our troops.
I'll wrap this one up with a link to an excellent Dennis Prager column entitled, quite bluntly, "The Left Doesn't Support the Troops and Should Admit It." He puts the issue in quite plain terms that anyone should be able to understand.
Here recently, there has been a spate of apologies. Now, I believe in owning up for your actions when you are wrong, and I am training my children to do the same. But these mass apologies to which I'm referring are nothing more than meaningless “I feel your pain” drivel.
First up is the recent Senate apology for not outlawing lynching. For starters, there is no one in the Senate today who was around then and didn't “outlaw” lynching at the Federal level. Besides, lynching was already illegal, under assault and murder laws - whether backwoods Southern police departments prosecuted offenders is not the domain of the Senate (legislative branch - law enforcement is a task of the executive branch). The only thing this resolution does is bring up, yet again, the terrible part of Southern history that is lynching. It reminds some Americans, now in their eighties and nineties, of a time that they've worked hard to overcome and forget. With the Senate still dragging their feet on judicial confirmations, wasting their time on this meaningless document seems ludicrous. One pundit has an interesting take on it (although his view of whether it was “good” or not differs from mine) - he says that this resolution forced Senators to make a political choice. (I'm proud to say that one my senators, Lamar Alexander (R-TN), as well as Richard Shelby (R-AL) and both Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-TX) and John Cornyn (R-TX) did not put their names on this.)
Next up is Richard Durbin's comments regarding the military, and his subsequent statement that he termed an "apology." He has used the patented “if then” apology technique - if what I said offended you, then I'm sorry. It's hard to say when this came into vogue - he's certainly not the first to try to pass something like that off as an apology. He said what he said, and offered us a window into his soul, his beliefs. If he doesn't have the spine to stick up for his conviction, well… that probably makes him like 70%+ of the elected officials in Washington, I suppose. ScrappleFace had a great parody on Sen. Durbin's apology - the “first draft” is a lot closer to an apology than what he actually said!
This apologizing can really get inane and picky - a candidate for office in New York has now apologized because, in describing her civil rights work in the 1960's, referred to a police vehicle as a "paddy wagon." This is absolutely ridiculous. I'm glad our Founding Fathers didn't have such thin skin as their progeny has now developed - they would have demanded an apology from Britain, and while they were standing there with their hands on their hips, the British would have killed them all.
Mass apologies, and apologies over trifling little issues, are meaningless. The only good thing they do is make it easy to tell who is more concerned with feelings than with accomplishment. As we go through life, things happen that either offend us, hurt us, or make us mad. When faced with these circumstances, we have two choices; we can either allow it to keep us down, and focus on our own feelings, or we can use it as motivation to make our lives better. The rugged men who founded our country chose the latter, and so do I. What will you choose?
While on vacation last week, I had the opportunity to finish a book I started over Christmas vacation - Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terror by Ann Coulter. In it, she meticulously (and I mean meticulously - there are 877 footnotes throughout 292 printed pages) details how the left, liberals, Democrats (pick your favorite label); these folks have been wrong about almost every foreign policy decision they've made over the last 50 years. (Today, another revelation occurred that, to me, shows that it hasn't stopped yet - but more on that later.)
The book starts with a look at Alger Hiss and Senator Joseph McCarthy. McCarthy is probably one of the most unfairly maligned people in United States history - especially since, within the last decade, declassified Soviet cables (intercepted by the Venona Project) have proved his allegations true. First, she makes the excellent point that Senator Joe McCarthy had nothing to do with the House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC). Instead, his modest job was to identify loyalty risks serving in sensitive positions. He was very good at his job, and identified several people that needed to be moved - not fired, not tried for treason and hanged, just moved out of the sensitive positions where they were currently.
Over the past 50+ years, the left has consistently been for containment, appeasement, and has been more than willing to cede portions of our national security to keep us from having to fight wars. I can't recall who said it, but the gist of it was “If these folks were just stupid, the laws of chance would dictate that they'd occasionally be right!” One paragraph (on page 154 of the paperback edition) summarizes just how duped they were in the Cold War, while debunking the claim that Truman's policies actually won the Cold War, it just took until Reagan's administration for them to work.
To review the record, as part of Truman's yeoman work on the Cold War, he cooperated with the Soviets at the Nuremberg Trials, white-washing their joint aggression with Hitler under the Nazi-Soviet Pact. He looked the other way when the Soviet Union murdered three million Russian prisoners of war returned home by the Allies. On his watch, the Soviet army consolidated its control over nine countries, China became a Communist dictatorship, and tens of millions of people were murdered under Communist tyrannies. Truman defended Communist spy Alger Hiss as a patriot who was framed by Republicans, and he tried to indict Whittaker Chambers for perjury. He refused to remove members of his administration identified to him by J. Edgar Hoover and others as Communist agents, including Harry Dexter White, whom Truman appointed to U. S. representative of the IMF. Among the Soviet spies advising Truman on China was Frank Coe, who refused to answer the question: “Are you a Soviet agent, Mr. Coe?” Soon thereafter Coe fled to Communist China, where he became a top policy-maker to Chairman Mao, helping the Chinese murder tens of millions of their own people. Truman was considered such a dupe of the Communists that the Army refused to tell him about the Venona Project. And that's how Truman won the Cold War!
Ann continues in other chapters to discuss the Bay of Pigs invasion, where we went back on our word by not supporting the Communist resistance there when Castro had very little power; Vietnam, where we were starting to make progress until a Democrat-controlled Congress used Watergate as an excuse to leave before winning; Grenada, where we went in and defeated Communism over a weekend; the Cold War, where an arms race did prove to be the way to bankrupt the Soviet economy; Iraq, where the same arguments once used against Vietnam and Grenada were once again being brought up, but yet we prevailed (not by appeasement, or inspections, but through force); and North Korea, where recent administrations have dropped the ball, but the current one is taking a strong stand.
While those who know Ann Coulter know that she simply delights in shredding the left to pieces, the content of this book is much more important that her amusing delivery method. What this book shows is that, using the 20/20 benefits of hindsight, the left's approach to defending our country only makes us weaker. When the decision was made to not prosecute Jane Fonda for her treasonous actions during the Vietnam War, the message was sent that this country wasn't interested in prosecuting anyone for these types of actions. So, Hollywood and the media have been more than willing to participate in this as well - which brings us to today's happenings.
Last week, Newsweek magazine ran a story that claimed that, as an interrogation technique, the Army had flushed a copy of the Koran down a toilet. This caused riots in Afghanistan, where 15 people have been killed and over 100 injured. Today, they ran another article where they said that their source for that piece of information is now unsure that that's what happened. (Separately, they have claimed that this is not a retraction of the story.) So, what we've got here is an international news magazine including uncorroborated hearsay from a single source in a story, claiming it as fact. I have several problems with this.
First, didn't Newsweek learn anything from the CBS News / Bush ANG document fiasco? The public deserves better, and our troops on the ground certainly deserve better fact-checking before they have to contain riots for no good reason.
Second, why was Newsweek so eager to run this part of the story? I believe it's the same reason that CBS News ran with the Bush ANG story - they wanted terribly for it to be true. For all their accusations, it's the left in this country that doesn't seem to realize that the “War on Terror” is not a “War on Islam”. They want us to disrespect Islam, so then they can say they were right.
Third, this bad decision has placed our military in harm's way. Iraq is not the only place we've got a military presence, training locals to take over their own security. Afghanistan is farther along than Iraq, but we're still there. With claims like this, even if they are true, publicizing them as some scandalous new revelation gives aid and comfort to our enemies. All they need is one story like this to fire them up for days - and now, not only have they given the opposition the morale boost, 15 people are dead because of it. There's no way that either the reporter or the editors will be tried for either treason or murder - but I believe a case could be made for either of those charges.
Finally, what does it matter if they did do it? I'm not a student of Islam, but as a Christian, I believe the Bible is the holy, inspired Word of God. Any feeble attempt by man to eliminate it is simple futility - others have attempted to destroy God's Word, and have had little success. Flushing paper and ink down a toilet does not come anywhere close to destroying it - only that copy. I would think that Muslims would feel the same way about their holy book - but, I may be wrong. I don't see what it would hurt, though - these terrorists already call us the Great Satan!
If you have the opportunity, pick up Ann's book at the store or library, and read through it. It's a great analysis of conflicting foreign policy over the last 50 years - and, it's fun to read to boot!