There is a reason that in some parts of the world, they call it "Remembrance Day.":
Such would become the pattern in the 20th Century. Winston Churchill
privately rejoiced over Pearl Harbor, because he knew that it meant that
Americans would bring our fighting men and women to the rescue of the
free nations of Europe and Asia, who were on the verge of needing to
arrange some kind of truce with the Nazis and with Japan by mid-1941 in
order to avoid being completely overrun by them.
In Korea, Americans intervened to keep all of that then-isolated
Asian country from falling under a Communist regime that many people
there did not want. That regime still exists in one-half of Kora, as the
" starving baffling hermit kingdom" of the world. The other half
remains free, prosperous, and an emerging economic powerhouse thanks in
no small part to the American soldiers and Marines standing guard at the
38th Parallel.
This column is brought to you by the men and women, past and present, of the United States Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, National Guard, Reserves, and Merchant Marine. If you enjoy reading it regularly, thank a few of them for it. If you are a veteran, thank you for your service to all of us.
The freedom to publish in this space was thankfully paid for by a Veteran:
Marching in the streets didn't bring us this freedom, but someone else who was willing to pay the price for that freedom did their part to keep the flame of liberty burning. The new Jefferson County Veterans' Memorial has been erected in White Pine, and it might be worth a few minutes of your time to pay your respects to the local men and women who paid the cost for you and I to go about our business in peace, freedom, and security.
Because of spilled blood and the making of the supreme sacrifice by countless thousands of Tennesseans from the Overmountain Men to those who landed on Omaha and Utah beaches, and those who presently serve in Iraq and Afghanistan, our Legislature is free to have a budget fight. In no small part because of the efforts of these noble souls we are able to enjoy a freely elected government in this State and throughout the United States.
As of yet, I can't be locked away forbeing openly criticalof the President, or of Governor Bredesen, or of our Members of Congress or the General Assembly. While I am well aware that there are many people both inside and outside of government who wish that I were locked away in a closet somewhere to be shut up, I am not because a soldier, sailor, airman, or Marine took a bullet that paid for my right to speak out.
Most people are aware of the "tea party" protests around the country, and the President would love the partiers to go away. You don't have to because some boys at Lexington and Concord were so tired of a government that tried to shut them up that they opened fire on its soldiers and faced the wrath of what in those days was the most awesomepower on earth so we could freely choose not to have the will of government imposed on us.
Our current Democratic President says we are not a Christian nation, but would be one of the largest Muslim nations if there weren't so many Christians. We are a secular nation, the President says (but President B. Hussein Obama says we would be one of the largest Muslim nations).
There are no atheists and secularists in foxholes or in beach minefields, or in forests filled with enemy infantry.
There was no secularism 65 years ago today, least of all from the Democratic President who led our country on that day and in that hour.
As SenatorBarack Obamacourted voters in Iowa last December, Representative Keith Ellison, the country’s first Muslim congressman, stepped forward eagerly to help.
Mr. Ellison believed that Mr. Obama’s message of unity resonated deeply with American Muslims. He volunteered to speak on Mr. Obama’s behalf at a mosque in Cedar Rapids, one of the nation’s oldest Muslim enclaves. But before the rally could take place, aides to Mr. Obama asked Mr. Ellison to cancel the trip because it might stir controversy. Another aide appeared at Mr. Ellison’s Washington office to explain.
“I will never forget the quote,” Mr. Ellison said, leaning forward in his chair as he recalled the aide’s words. “He said, ‘We have a very tightly wrapped message.’ ”
We need to be bluntly honest about reality here-just what were these Muslim groups expecting to happen? Barack Obama is not a Muslim, but he does have plenty of family members who are (by his own admission), and last time I checked we as a nation were engaged in hostile action in two overwhelmingly Muslim nations, and have been attacked many times-and in 2001 finally on our own soil-by groups acting in the name of Islam.
We can speak all we like about the fact that a majority of Muslims would not act in the way that these terrorist groups would act, but the opinions of groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, and Al Qaeda are widely-held opinions on the street in the Muslim world. The anti-American, anti-Jewish (of all sorts), and even anti-Christian (of all sorts) feeling in the Muslim world is not a creature of the Iraq War, it goes back decades to the time of Harry Truman, and foreign policy decisions made during Truman's administration. While the wisdom of these decisions is still a matter of scholarly debate, they are decisions deemed at the time to have been in the best interest of the United States, and are such that 60 years later they cannot be undone.
Many of Barack Obama's younger supporters seem to make the mistake of believing that anti-American feeling among Muslims in the Middle East is something brought about by the present Administration, when in reality the United States has either been in a state of high tension (1979 Iran Hostage Crisis, American and other Western Hostages held and/or killed in Lebanon in the 1980's) or low war (1983 Beirut Marine bombing, 1986 Libya mission, First Gulf War) against forces in the Muslim world for years. It is more than understandable why many Americans would feel uncomfortable having someone seen as being too cozy with Muslims or the Muslim world as President of the United States.
Having once roomed with a Muslim in college and having known several Muslims over the course of my life, I can attest that there is a difference between those "Muslims" who in reality choose to Westernize themselves in this country, and Muslims whose sympathies and outlook lie primarily in the Middle East. No, I don't believe that Barack Obama's Muslim supporters are lining up to bomb buildings and chant death to America.
The trouble is that Muslims in the Muslim world who would do these things have made it clear that they prefer Barack Obama, and Obama's people know that isn't good for their man.
The Democrats are attempting to make political hay over John McCain's non-press political fundraisers with the President. Barack Obama is attempting to say that the reason these events are closed to the press is because McCain does not want to be seen with the President in public, as it will somehow re-inforce the notion that McCain is tied to Bush. Indeed, both Obama and Hillary Clinton are doing their level best to paint John McCain as "George Bush's third term."
News flash: These two men don't like each other in the least, and all indications are that McCain despises the President. The argument that it is somehow shadowy that McCain has had a private fundraiser with the President rings hollow when one considers that Democratic presidents have done the same sort of thing in areas where being seen with certain Congressional candidates makes those candidates political pariahs. What John McCain has done may be an unfortunate practice, but it is not in any way an unusual one.
Anyone who has ever run for office, whether for a small office or a very significant one, will tell you that as a candidate you have to take any legally raised money that you can get. So long as the cash is raised in a legally appropriate way and doesn't come from Nazis or Communists (or similar characters), a candidate has got to be willing to take the money. The reason is because your opponent won't care where they get their money, so long as they have it and can use it against you. Attempting to somehow tie McCain to the President because the President had a private fundraiser for the Republican nominee is extremely disingenuous-both the President and McCain are trying to play the loyal Republican-the President by staying out of the public eye where McCain is concerned, and McCain because base Republicans like myself who have always been loyal to the GOP already (rightly) question McCain's loyalty to the party. John McCain needs to show us that he is willing to sacrifice for the sake of the party, just as the party has often asked us to hold our noses and sacrifice for it.
It is disingenuous of Democrats to make too much political hay over something that they would do if the political situation were reversed-they've had private fundraisers before. Reality never stopped the Left from running their mouths, however.
My saying this shouldn't be seen as a defense of the President. I was opposed to the Iraq War from the beginning, and when other conservatives were calling me crazy for saying that starting a war in Iraq would undermine our progress in the Afghan theatre and the overall War on Terror, I maintained that Iraq was a huge political as well as military blunder. I've been proven right on that score several times over the last five years, and former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan's new book seems to confirm my original opposition yet again.
The problem now is that we can't simply withdraw our forces from Iraq with our tails between our legs and expect the problem there to go away. To do so would create a foreign policy disaster on a parallel with Jimmy Carter's handling of the Iran Hostage Crisis, and would simply bolster our enemies around the world with the notion that all they need to do is push the squishy Americans just long enough, and the Americans will run away. For the sake of our national security, we simply cannot afford any strategy that gives comfort to our enemies-period. The United States cannot withdraw forces from Iraq without some kind of settlement in place at this point that allows us to declare victory and mean it. Unilateral withdraw without such an arrangement will likely create multiple crises in the Middle East that could explode at once. If Barack Obama, his advisors, or the Left of the Democratic Party cannot see that (and I think they do, they would just never admit it) then they are all living in Cloud-cukoo-land.
George Will has an outstanding column for The Washington Post that ran in today's Knoxville News-Sentinel about Senator Gordon Smith of Oregon and his change of heart on Iraq. I suspect that many other Republicans in both Houses of Congress will follow Smith as becomes more and more clear how much of a quagmire the situation in Iraq is.
At this point in the war, I might be willing to cut the President some slack when it comes to the idea that Islamic terrorists may come to see the United States as weak and unwilling to fight if we withdraw. That argument might wash if the President had not started the war in Iraq unnecessarily while still waging one in Afghanistan against terrorists who were posing a real and legitimate threat. That war was going very well, we were winning and it was clear we were doing so. Our forces were doing what the President has said he wanted to do all along-defeating the terrorists who pose a threat to the United States of America.
When the War in Iraq began, it not only opened our thinly-stretched forces up to a second front, it gave the terrorists a second front to divert to in the wake of the invasion. Because of the opening of that second front, the Taleban is gaining strength and has already taken power back in some areas of the country. Rather than stave off the Taliban, we do not have enough manpower in Afghanistan to continue to press the enemy. This has resulted in a resurgence of both the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and the latter now operates in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
Rather than defeating the terrorists, starting a war in Iraq stretched our forces in Afghanistan so thin that the enemy is now enjoying a level of success with unconventional tactics not seen before the launch of the Iraq War.
This is not a case of simple diminishing popularity such as Harry Truman experienced in the wake of the situation in Korea in his day. There was a clear threat of Communist expansion in Korea that was met and thwarted, even though the situation appeared to be a stalemate. Many of Truman's popularity problems stemmed as much from disagreements over domestic policy as from the war in Korea. Nearly all of Bush's political problem in this country has to do with Iraq. The economy is not in shambles, the judges he has appointed have been solid picks-indeed his Supreme Court picks have heretofore been the high point of the Bush Presidency. The problem is the conduct of the war, and the domestic policy decisions associated with the war, such as the PATRIOT Act.
It is on this war that the President has chosen to spend his political capital, and he has squandered it mightily on a disastrous policy that has destroyed a legacy that instead could have been marked by a restoration of conservatism in the national consciousness such as was seen in the days of Ronald Reagan. The President chose to wage war on an assumption built on a fabrication (WMD's), and sacrifice the success of one campaign for the sheer ability to wage-not win-another.
We are now in a no-win situation in Iraq. If we pull out, it sends the message to our enemies that we are soft, weak, and do not have the stomach to fight. This is a notion that is hateful to any real American. If we remain in Iraq, our men and women will be subjected to a situation where there can be no military victory, and they will be asked to spend their blood and toil for heathens and infidels who no more appreciate their sacrifice than a rat appreciates table scraps.
Even though these words were spoken in 1968, there are at least parts of them that ring as true today for our present situation as they did for Vietnam. Mr. Cronkite speaks to our honor as a nation.
In today's Knoxville News Sentinel is to be found a story about Congressman Jimmy Duncan and his consistent record of opposition to the Iraq War. The prolific former judge (whose father was Knoxville mayor) has lately been accused by a few people of not having a conservative voting record, and these folks usually base their criticisms of Duncan on his opposition to the war.
John J. Duncan Jr. is not a pacifist, however. He voted in favor of authorizing the President to use force in Afghanistan, and has supported force when it has been necessary throughout his Congressional career. What he has never been prone to do is support the use of force when it is not necessary, and no one can accuse Jimmy Duncan of being liberal because of that. To wage war is an extremely expensive proposition, both in the financial cost as well as in the more important expense of human life and suffering. It is never a matter to be entered into lightly or without proper planning. Further, our Founding Fathers believed that war was such a heinous activity that we should not willfully enter into combat on foreign soil. Congressman Duncan holds firm to that very conservative belief.
When we look at the raw data about Jimmy Duncan's voting record, we see a man who has a more conservative voting record than either Lamar Alexander or Bill Frist. I don't always see eye-to-eye with Duncan, nor did I have any particular appreciation for how he has handled the Presidential campaign so far. Saying "I endorse Romney," and then bolting to help lead a Draft Fred Thompson movement did not speak well for Duncan's normal steadfastness-he should have waited until the field was more definite. Somehow you could just tell that he was uncomfortable with Romney, and rightly so. In spite of this, however, all one needs to do to appreciate Duncan's fidelity to conservative principles is examine his voting record.
There are many so-called conservatives who change their position with the political wind. Blanket free trade (as in agreements such as NAFTA or GATT) aren't really based in conservative principles, because those agreements are a plethora of regulation. They break down protections while imposing new and restrictive rules on sovereign control. Conservatives have historically opposed those kinds of agreements, yet many so-called conservatives today say that it is conservative to support them-this is not ideologically consistent. Similarly, conservatives have historically opposed interventionist foreign wars, as the Founding Fathers did-it is the conservative thing to do. Yet many so-called conservatives want to play world policeman in a way that threatens our economy, our sovereignty, and the lives of our service personnel. This is not a conservative way to think.
Jimmy Duncan has told East Tennesseans and the world that he is a conservative. When he votes against the war, he is trying to show his constituents that unlike many others, his conservatism is an ideologically consistent one.
White Pine welcomes home a war veteran and hero today. Marine Corporal Bradley J. Walker, who lost both of his legs in the war in Iraq, will pull into town at about ten this morning on a 30-day leave. What Cpl. Walker may or may not be aware of is that this little town of just less than 2,000 people has prepared a welcome for him with all of the pomp and circumstance that it can muster.
The signals of a patriotic celebration are everywhere to be found this morning. Up and down Main Street flags are hanging from every business, church, and public building. Red, white, and blue bunting is festooned from rooftops and facades. Small flags held in place by yellow ribbons are on nearly every pole in town. Out in front of the U.S. Bank branch a short walk from my house on the corner of Main and Creamery Streets is a huge homemade sign that reads "Welcome Home Brad." The White Pine Board of Mayor and Aldermen have declared today "Bradley Walker Day."
It may seem like somewhat of a common occurrence in this time of an unpopular war for those who live in larger and more metropolitan places. This celebration is quite remarkable, however, for the fact that support for our war policy in Iraq is really far from unanimous here. A good way to figure this out is to listen to the men who gather at Allen-Surrett's Hardware Store or at the Sanitary Drugstore every morning. Groans of collective dissatisfaction and disquiet emanate from the room whenever someone mentions the war. The war makes everyone in this heavily-Republican stronghold uncomfortable, and among those who I have heard be vocal in their opposition, even angry.
Few believe, however, that this anger should be reflected upon heroes like Corporal Walker. Many people here are old enough to remember Vietnam, and how returning troops were treated in the wake of a disastrous policy over which they had no control. These men and women have, in many cases, committed acts of self-sacrifice and heroism we can only imagine in our finite minds. The commitment to country of our fighting men should not be questioned, even as we evaluate the wisdom of the war itself at home.
Appreciation for self-sacrifice does not know opposition here, and I am glad that it does not. Corporal Walker deserves a hero's welcome for his commitment to serve far beyond what this town can give him.
The President's plan for "success" in Iraq is, it seems to me, a non-plan. From a raw political point of view, it is a non-starter even among many Republicans and conservatives. From a military point of view, if "victory" or "stability" was the goal of this war from the beginning, troop levels should have been massive from the beginning of this conflict-we needed something on the level of the First Gulf War in terms of numbers.
When the war began, I remember having the discussion with my Dad as to what would happen in Iraq. Dad is, like his Dad before him, an Army man. He long ago left the Army, but I don't think the Army has ever left him. When I was growing up, Dad was the man to talk to in the house about any matters military-as a former staff NCO stationed at Fort Knox, my Dad could tell you what was happening on the ground or going through the mind of the foot soldier better than anyone that I knew of.
When the war began, I remember asking my Dad in a conversation on the phone how he thought the war would go. He plainly said "in the beginning it will appear as though we have won." He explained how he believed our troops will march straight to Baghdad with little resistance. He compared the situation, though, to the German advance into Russia in 1941, when German panzer divisions surged deep into the country with little resistance and believed they, too, were essentially victorious. When the Germans made it as far as Moscow and Stalingrad, the people began to resist and winter set in. The Iraqi people clearly do not want us there, and our "Russian winter" would seem to be the ongoing terrorist insurgency that is often led by people who are not Iraqis at all.
One hundred and fifty thousand troops is simply not enough of an invasion force to conquer an entire country-we needed three times that number. On top of that, we have not finished another war that we needed to finish to really win the war on terror: As a result of our negligence of a far more important conflict, the Taliban are making a serious comeback in Afghanistan.
The way out is now uncertain, but I am quite certain that as far as Iraq goes, the United States should never have found a "way in" to begin with.
The President finally admitted the obvious yesterday, telling a reporter from theWashington Post that the U.S. was not winning in Iraq-something the rest of us were aware of months ago. I am of the belief that we are past the point where outright military victory is no longer an option, largely because the previous Defense Secretary refused to assent to an increase in troop levels when they were needed, and now the situation may, I fear, be beyond repair.
The President said that he wants to increase the number of troops and the troop levels in the Army and Marines, and that he is going to try and get the Congress to increase military spending. Good luck with that, Mr. President. If victory was your goal you should have taken action to do this three years ago when the war began, and when you had a friendly Congress ready and willing to accomodate Pentagon demands. As it stands now, Congress will be reluctant to spend on the military even if the money is needed, and the people are tired of a war that was grossly mismanaged and badly timed, and that is saying it mildly, Mr. President.
I was against going to war in Iraq from the very beginning, but once the war began, I was willing for us to do whatever it takes to achieve victory. Our troops in the field did not deserve defeat. The problem is that the administration that started this war has thus far been unwilling to fight it properly, and the President's latest words and moves may be too little, too late.
I am not one who is under the illusion, as some are, that winning a war should always be quick and easy, nor do I indulge myself in the fantasy that war should never be waged or that there is never a good reason to fight a war. Ecclesiastes tells us that for everything there is a season, including a time for war and a time for peace. Knowing that there is a season for all things, it can also be presumed that one must use discernment in determining what "season" it is. Where Iraq is concerned, I think it is a very fair assessment to conclude that the President of the United States was not a good judge of the seasons when he elected to send American troops to Iraq.
It is often the case that people in public life suffer terrible political consequences for decisions that later prove to be very wise. Some have said that this may come to be the case with Iraq, but if that is true I fail to see how it has been wise to replace a dictator who kept general order in the region with a so-called Prime Minister who attempts to dictate the terms of his government's cooperation to the very country that allowed him to rise to power in the first place. There is no benefit in being told what to do by your own children, and this is apparently the case where the present government of Iraq is concerned. It is true that Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who is undoubtedly guilty of incalculable crimes against his own people. If this is America's standard for intervention, I can think of dozens of leaders around the world who needed to be deposed before we got around to Saddam, including the psychopath in Pyongyang.
"But David," you say "when the war began, our people believed Saddam had weapons of mass destruction." One thing our intelligence gatherers were quite certain of was that if Saddam had these weapons, he had no means to deliver them. Unlike North Korea, Saddam had no great love for Iran or for Al Qaeda and was in no mood to deal with them.
When the war in Iraq began, America was already at war in Afghanistan. The American people were fully behind that expedition, and I believe that had America made the Himalayas our only theater of operation, the American people would continue to be fully behind the mission whatever the cost-we understand the need to stop the Taliban. Our neglect of the Afghan theater is causing the hated Taliban to re-emerge.
Iraq is a present reality, and despite what the Democrats say in public, they privately know that the U.S. cannot arbitrarily remove our forces. We are not in a position in the world to do this, at it makes us look weak and willing to cave at the first cracks of political pressure. It does not matter that in the eyes of the American people the withdrawal would be taking place because the war never should have taken place to begin with, that is not what our enemies around the world see.
The only thing the American people can do to show their disapproval of this war is punish the party in power. As we approach election day, it is clear that this kind of punishment is going to take place, and a lot of good people may go down with the ship. There is a slim chance the GOP may hang on to both Houses of Congress, but if they do it will be with a slim and nearly unworkable majority. Along with the war, corruption in this Congress has made a mockery of the Revolution of 1994 that the grassroots worked so hard to build.
Perhaps it all could have been prevented had certain people in Washington been good judges of the seasons.
A conservative journal of social, cultural, and ecclesiatical affairs grounded in a realistic Catholic Christian worldview. It is my hope that this site will be a reflection of Christ,the teachings of His Holy Church, and of the basic vision of a Christian social morality.
