Don’t Let the Door Hit Ya Where the Good Lord Split Ya

Tuesday, May 29, 2007 11:20 pm Daniel J. Summers

(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.

Patriot Day 2004

Saturday, September 11, 2004 6:20 pm Daniel J. Summers

(This one's long, but I hope you take the time to read it and think…)

Three years ago, our country was attacked. It was not the first terrorist attack on our interests, or even the first attack on our own soil. But three years ago was, by far, the most successful (from the terrorists' point of view) attack on us yet. Over 2,500 innocent Americans lost their lives over the span of a few hours. Looking back, the fact that this number is so much lower than it could be (around 100,000 people were employed in the two WTC towers) is due to the grace of God, and the heroic efforts of firemen and policemen who helped thousands of folks flee to safety after the towers and the Pentagon were hit. Still, the fact remains that we were attacked on our own soil, and that attack resulted in a large loss of life.

Sit back from the computer for a minute or two and think back to where you were, and the thoughts that went through your mind that Tuesday morning. I remember very vividly where I was. A co-worker said “someone flew a plane into the World Trade Center!” It clicked for me right away, although it took some time to accept it - with all the talk about it being an accident, I didn't buy that. Moments later, as we all watched on our IPTV windows, we saw the second plane hit. All the talk of an accident evaporated in an instant - we were under attack. More bad news - another one hit the Pentagon - was there an explosion outside the State Department? - a plane went down in Pennsylvania - FAA grounds all flights - international flights are turned back. We went to FPCON Delta, the post-attack posture under which every vehicle coming on and off base is searched, and, for a time, no traffic is allowed on or off base.

I also remember clearly that all these things weren't what was foremost in my mind. My oldest child was going to school only during the mornings on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, so they weren't gone when it happened. I live on base, so I knew that I wouldn't have to leave the base, and neither would my family. I was still concerned for them, though - what if our base is on the target list? At this point, we didn't know nearly as much about al-Qaeda as we do now. I came home and just held my wife, then my kids. My second child was barely over 1, so he was pretty much oblivious; but my 2 1/2-year-old (who even then was very bright) couldn't understand why they would fly those planes into those buildings. He also didn't understand why mom and dad were crying, or near tears, the whole time.

I'm going to link that amazing site that's linked at the bottom of the page - never forget what happened that day. Since that day, we've engaged in two major theater wars - one in Afghanistan and one in Iraq. Despite warnings of quagmires the likes of which we haven't seen since Vietnam, we have been successful in both these operations, installing democracy and freedom into two areas of the world that desperately need it. During that time, we've lost 1,000 combined in those two theaters. In Vietnam, that number was over 58,000. (source: DoD) It's a tribute to our men and women in uniform who have shown ceaseless dedication to their country, and to the development and use of the best tools of war on the planet. Although some may classify me in that category, as stateside support, the only thing I've sacrificed for this war is a few longer hours. I am deeply grateful to my comrades in arms who are out there in the desert, on the lines, loading bombs, driving patrols, doing everything they can to keep us free and return home to their families.

This is the reason it is so important to have a leader in this country who is not afraid to stand up to terrorists. When the WTC was attacked the first time in 1993, we did nothing. When the Kenyan embassies were bombed, we did nothing. When the USS Cole was bombed, we did nothing. Could we not see this coming? When I was in school, I was told that studying history was important, because “those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.” I believe that. We've seen what inaction brings, and we cannot afford inaction any more, not even if it's cloaked in the term “diplomacy.” Since 9/11/01, al-Qaeda has struck in Bali, Madrid, and most recently, in Russia, as well as cooperating with Hezbollah in bringing terrorism to Israel.

Americans are, collectively, the most kind-hearted people in the world. We recognize the true threat that lies before us, and we are choosing to take the fight to them. I have a really hard time not questioning the intelligence of someone who thinks we shouldn't have gone into Iraq. Saddam Hussein was a dictator who used instant execution, limb removal, and rape as methods of governmental punishment. He used WMD on his own people in the north, and was completely uncooperative with United Nations inspectors who were verifying that he had stopped production. And the “there were no WMDs” crowd doesn't seem to consider enough Sarin gas to kill 60,000, or a large stash of low-enriched unranium, to be weapons of mass destruction. I say to those folks, how would like for what we've found to be detonated or released in your neighborhood? Would it become a WMD then?

So, we've got a dictator, who rapes, mutilates, and kills his own people, who has taken a hit out on a sitting United States President, and who is sympathetic to terrorists. Even the most obtuse among us should be able to see that we do not need that man in possession of WMDs, or even parts that can be made into such. Russia is our ally, and even they have some suitcase nukes they can't find. How much more easily would it be for nuclear or chemical weapons to find their way into terrorists' hands if the leadership of the country just hands it to them?

During the Republican National Convention, just after President Bush's speech, I listed to the talking heads dissect it. (I think the channel was on CBS.) The folks there said that the parts of the speech that dealt with domestic issues got applause, but with nowhere near the passion of the applause in the national defense portion. I think that's because the vast majority of Republicans (and a lot of Democrats, which is why I predict Bush will roll in November) know that without a secure national defense, domestic programs are meaningless. You may have seen this, but I'm posting it here in case you haven't. Stephen Ambrose said “It is the soldier, not the poet, who gives us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the reporter, who gives us freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who gives us freedom to protest. It is the soldier who serves beneath the flag, who salutes the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who gives the demonstrator the right to burn the flag.”

So, on this Patriot Day 2004, remember the lives of those whose crime was only that they got to work early that morning. Remember the 1,000+ defenders of freedom who have lost their lives while ensuring that anything like 9/11 never happens again. Remember the sons and daughters who will be celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas this year, for the first time, without their mom or dad. Remember the spouses, who have lost a life partner and best friend. Thank the Lord that you live in a country that does not let these acts of aggression stand, and thank the Lord that George W. Bush made the tough decision to defend our nation. May God bless this great nation.

Britney Spears (R-LA)

Wednesday, September 1, 2004 9:45 pm Daniel J. Summers

The Republican Party is missing an opportunity this week in New York. I don't think it'll be a fatal mistake, by any stretch. Britney Spears, former virginal Mouseketeer who has become a bit more sensual as of late, is a Republican. There had been some folks considering inviting her to the Republican National Convention to entertain the delegates. However, some groups within the RNC claimed that her presence would send the wrong message to the nation.

Britney has, in the past, done much to make the nation blush. From her appearance on Nickelodeon's Kids Choice Awards wearing a white tank top and no bra, to her kiss with Madonna last year during MTV's Video Music Awards opening act, from her initial video that some said played on the “naughty schoolgirl” image, to her more recent videos that are quite sensual (the award-winning “Toxic” being bounced from daytime play on MTV after the Super Bowl incident), she has given folks plenty of room to develop these concerns. For many of these folks, the straw that broke the camel's back was her 55-hour marriage last year.

However, Britney seems to have turned a corner. She's been dressing a bit more conservatively (and, no matter what she wears, she's still going to be smokin'), and she seemed to be willing in initial overtures to her to perform at the RNC. The inclusiveness already demonstrated at the convention is great, and I think that a Spears appearance would have gotten the GOP some votes among younger voters. And, with class acts such as Martina McBride and Faith Hill there for her to hang out with and learn from, who's to say that an invitation might just have been the acceptance that she needed to continue her transition to becoming a real woman.

Acceptance is a powerful motivator, especially to someone who is trying to make a change. Jessica Simpson originally wanted to be a Christian singer; but, due to her well-endowedness, no Christian label would sign her. How different would her life and music be if she had received encouragement from the Christian community, and spent her teen years among Christians, instead of out in the pop world?

The true irony in all this is that Kid Rock was invited to play an after-party at the convention. If Kid Rock can lend his support, why not Ms. Spears?