Thursday, January 6, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST
The 109th Congress has been sworn in and convened, and now the new post-election reality begins. If I were a Democrat right now I would think big and get serious. Second terms are tough for incumbents; history has not handed George W. Bush an easy ride, and there’s no reason to think that will change now; and Mr. Bush is a gambler who’s not afraid to throw the dice, which means he will likely have not only stunning gains but stunning losses ahead…
There is much to build on. You hold 44 Senate seats, 202 House seats and 22 governorships. You have been on a losing strain for a while, but you can turn that into opportunity. Now, in the depths–or what you frankly hope are the depths–you can move for change within the party. Nothing sobers like defeat. Use the new sobriety to shake off the mad left…
The Groups–all the left-wing outfits from the abortion people to the enviros–didn’t deliver in the last election, and not because they didn’t try. They worked their hearts out. But they had no one to deliver. They had only money. The secret: Nobody likes them. Nobody! No matter how you feel about abortion, no one likes pro-abortion fanatics; no one likes mad scientists who cook environmental data. Or rather only rich and creepy people like them…
Read the entire article on the Wall Street Journal website.
I was surprised to agree with Peggy more than I disagreed with her.
I agree:
(1) The Democrats need to distance themselves from the pro-abortion faction of their party and articulate a whole new policy on abortion if they hope to make any inroads among religious voters.
(2) Democrats need to develop, communicate and control their message, rather than letting controversial organizations or personalities (like Michael Moore) be their principal spokesmen.
(3) Most intruiging of all: Peggy suggests that there IS a case to be made AGAINST President Bush’s Social Security phase-out proposal and suggests wisely that Democrats avoid demogueging this issue but explain their objections in calm, rational terms. Couldn’t agree more!
I disagree that
(1) Democrats need to be more like Republicans, the Republican-Lite party.
(2) Democrats should avoid talking about raising taxes. President Bush’s tax cuts have been a major cause of our ruinous deficits, and there is no way we can balance the budget through spending cuts alone when the annual federal descretionary spending is only slightly larger than the entire annual deficit itself. Both equal about a quarter of the budget.
If the choice is between an out of control national debt that leads to an Argentina-style economic melt-down, or raising taxes on the rich and corporations any sensible person should choose the later.
(3) War-Mongering equals “strong in the world”. Diplomacy equals “weak in the world.”
Here’s another good analysis.
Why the Democrats Keep Losing.
One excerpt:
Even as the Democrats and their friends in the mainstream media minimized the import of Bushâ??s victory in 2004, it seems likely that their pained response was due precisely to the fact that the Republican victory, if not deep, was undeniably broad. In addition to winning the presidency with an absolute majority of the popular vote (something no Democrat has achieved since Lyndon Johnson in 1964), the Republicans solidified their majorities in the Senate and the House of Representatives. This will be the sixth successive Congress since 1994 in which the Republicans will have controlled both houses.
Democrats need to do far more than just not let Michael Moore & Moveon.org be their spokesmen. They need to denounce, in no uncertain terms, these wild-eyed loons whenever and wherever they speak. When Michael Moore described the head-sawing, murderous Islamofascists as “the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow — and they will win. ” he should have been loudly condemned and rejected by the Democrats. Instead they invited him to sit in the Presidential Box at their National Convention.
And now they are starting the 2005 by Borking Gonzalez and by joining with the Left wing conspiracy wing-nuts denouncing the Presidential election.
Not an auspicious start.
Are the Democrats starting to go the route of the Federalist Party of the early 1800s? Probably not. But they are certainly seem to be well on their way to becoming a minority political party for a very long time.
Daniel: The role of the Democratic party is not to be a Soviet-Style “rubber stamp,” but to serve as the Opposition Party offering a true alternative to the policies of the party in power. We don’t live in a one-party state. The founders of our nation did not consider debate and a competition of ideas to be seditious; to the contrary they hoped there would be a vigorous debate and designed our system of government accordingly.
Also, concurrent with that role, Democratic members of Congress also have a constitutional responsibility to provide “checks and balances” on the power of the Executive branch. That is also how the Founders hoped that government would work.
The Democrats in Congress would be delinquent in their duties if they did not closely scrutinize the nomination of Alberto Gonzalez. Mr Gonzalez has at least three items in his history that raise serious concerns about his fitness to be Attorney general.
(1) As an advisor to then Governor Bush he was responsible for providing summaries of the cases of men who were about to be executed. Gonzalez’s reports were extremely cursory and superficial and often omitted important facts that could have influenced the Governor’s decision to grant clemency.
(2) Gonzalez was asked to review the credentials and background of Bernard Kerik to be head of the Dept. of Homeland security. Gonzalez cursory review again missed pertinent items in Kerik’s background such as his connections to the mob, his financial irregularities, his mistresses and extramarital trysts on police property.
(3) Gonzalez was one of the principal architects of the Bush administration’s policies on methods of interrogation of prisoners. Gonzalez’s opinion that the application pain is not torture, or prohibited, as long as it doesn’t cause death of organ failure, is simply appalling and morally repugnant to every decent American. The Abu Ghraib scandal and the countless other investigations into abusive and sadistic treatment of prisoners, so alarmng that both CIA and FBI agents sent worried memos to their superiors, is the direct result of the lax policies and environment created by Gonzalez and his cohorts.
By now, almost every person in the Arab world has seen the Abu Ghraib photos, and heard of the infamous Gonzales “torture memo” that called the Geneva Convention quaint and obsolete .It is no exagerataion to say that Gonzalez has endangered the life of every American soldier who may someday be taken prisoner.
This week 12 retire military generals, not left-wing kooks, wrote that “During his tenure as White House Counsel, Mr. Gonzales appears to have played a significant role in shaping U.S. detention and interrogation operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, and elsewhere. Today, it is clear that these operations have fostered greater animosity toward the United States, undermined our intelligence gathering efforts, and added to the risks facing our troops serving around the world. ”
http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/media/2005_alerts/etn_0104_mil_let.htm
Those generals include:
Brigadier General David M. Brahms (Ret. USMC)
Brigadier General James Cullen (Ret. USA)
Brigadier General Evelyn P. Foote (Ret. USA)
Lieutenant General Robert Gard (Ret. USA)
Vice Admiral Lee F. Gunn (Ret. USN)
Admiral Don Guter (Ret. USN)
General Joseph Hoar (Ret. USMC)
Rear Admiral John D. Hutson (Ret. USN)
Lieutenant General Claudia Kennedy (Ret. USA)
General Merrill McPeak (Ret. USAF)
Major General Melvyn Montano (Ret. USA)
General John Shalikashvili (Ret. USA
Bill Bennet weighs in:
The Democratic Dialectic, the Democratic Problem: The future of a once-great party.
Note 4: Dean writes: “Daniel: The role of the Democratic party is not to be a Soviet-Style “rubber stamp,” but to serve as the Opposition Party offering a true alternative to the policies of the party in power. We don’t live in a one-party state. The founders of our nation did not consider debate and a competition of ideas to be seditious; to the contrary they hoped there would be a vigorous debate and designed our system of government accordingly.”
And this is a response to –what? –Daniel’s point that the Democrats elevated Moore and moveon.org? How does Daniel’s point in anyway endorse the view that the Democrats should become a “Soviet-Style ‘rubber stamp'” or that their minority views are “seditious”?
You need to tame that wagging finger Dean. If you like Michael Moore or moveon.org, then defend them. Don’t imply that Daniel is a crypto-fascist because he criticizes the Dem’s love affair with the hard left. The truth is that Moore was heralded at the convention and no Dem spoke out against Soros and his millions used to fund moveon.org and their projects.
And the paragraphs about Gonzales, well, it’s the usual modus operandi — scold and then throw in something provocative immediately following.
RE: Note #4’s comments on the Founding Fathers and the press at the time> Another example of historical anacronism. Do not forget that it was the Federalists during the Presidency of John Adams who passed the Alien and Sedition Acts. The Alien and Sedition Acts were, in large part, an attempt to muzzle Thomas Jefferson and the press under his control or favoring him. Free speech has always been seditious to those in power, that is the nature of free speech.
The press at the time made no attempt to be objective–they were gleefully biased, much like today’s new media. Just remember, there is no such thing as objectivity, only those who are honest in disclosing their bias and trying to correct for it.
Alberto Gonzales: I am troubled by him. He seems to be a legalist without moral foundation–practicing law by looking in the law for what supports his employer’s position, not looking for the most correct course of action in accord with the spirit of the law. Not a good trait. Personally, I’d like to see him rejected for confirmation.
There is a serious opportunity for the Democrats, if they could just seize it. Bush and Rove have counted on the Democratic Party being hard left on almost every single issue from immigration to abortion. This has opened up massive room for the Republicans under Bush to move to center-left on a whole host of issues – without a single penalty to pay. For example, it was Bush not Clinton that appointed an openly homosexual man as an ambassador to an Orthodox nation. It was Bush, not a Democrat, that gave us steel tariffs, a proposed amnesty for illegal immigrants, Ted Kennedy’s education bill, a continuation of the occupation of Kosovo, a justification for war that depended heavily on enforcing U.N. resolutions, massive budget deficits, neo-Wilsonism as a foreign policy, massive foreign aid, a massive federal bureaucracy known by the Orwellian label ‘Homeland security,’ no funding for the Born Alive Protection Act, and no support for the Federal Marriage Amendment. I worked on my first Republican campaign at age 14. I joined the Marines at 18. I have been a professional campaign manager for Republican candidates several times. I speak frequently at Republican organizations in Central Florida. Let me be clear, if the Bush agenda is ‘right-wing,’ then I have no concept of what a leftist agenda might look like. The Republican Party I grew up in (Taft-Goldwater-Reagan-Buchanan) would never have stood for this claptrap masquerading as ‘conservatism.’
Which brings us to the the Democrats’ golden opportunity – move right on some big issues. Hillary is already doing this on the borders issue, though she has no credibility on such things. The point is that if the Dems put up a Sam Nunn or other Southern Democrat who can reliably run to the right and projects an air of mainstream normality – 2008 or even 2006 could be rough sledding for a Republican Party whose new ideas mostly seem to come straight out of the Democratic Party circa 1914. Can the Dems do it? I don’t see why not, there are Dems left who can pull it off, especially if the Republicans drift farther left and even, God forbid, put up an openly pro-homosexual, pro-abortion candidate in 2008 like McCain.
The Republicans might be foolish enough to nominate a McCain (he certainly is lobbying hard for it), but do you really think that Democrats will move center-right? Yes, Hillary is trying to reposition herself as a conservative, but time will tell is this will ever fly. My read is that the captivity to the hard left is so deep, particularly among the leadership, that they won’t even recognize this opportunity if it arises, or those that do won’t get a hearing.
I hope the reports of soul-searching among Democrats after the election result in a new Democratic position on abortion, one that acknowledges the moral concerns of the majority of American people and one that recognizes that the price of keeping abortion “safe”, and “legal” for those women with a medical neccesity, is taking steps to measurably reduce abortions of social convenience for women with no medical neccesity.
I want to hear the Democrats say as a party, “Yes we are troubled by the number of abortions in this country and are committed to reducing them through the increased education to reduce uninteneded pregnancies, adoption assistance, financial aid for unwed mothers, and the elimination of public funding and insurance coverage for non-mmedically necessary abortions.”
As far as gay marriage in concerned, while I resent the way the issue was used as a wedge issue, I think conservatives are correct that the institution of marriage is between one man and one woman and changing that opens up a can of worms. The Democrats should as a party reject gay marriage and support some alternate legal arrangement for gay partners (“civil unions”, domestic partnership”, whatever) that confers some legal rights for inheritance, and insurance coverage, for example, without calling that arrangement marriage.
Democrats can call for reducing the size of government through the aggressive search of greater efficiencies and reduced waste. Over the next ten years a quarter to a third of all federal and state employees will be retiring. This is a good opportunity to rethink the way government delivers services and provides value to the taxpayer. Proposition 13, which capped property tax increases in California, initially hurt local governments but gradually it did teach them how to be more efficient and effective with the dollars they did have.
Note 4 Smearing Gonzalez by Repeating the Party Line:
Goal of Democrats: Smear Gonzalez to prevent his ascendance to the Supreme Court and deny Bush the privilege and advantage of appointing the first Hispanic to the Court.
WHAT THE DEMOCRATS ARE DOING IS A SMEAR. A CALCULATED SMEAR
There is not a single legtimate legal scholar on the faculty of any University in the country who believes that the Geneva Convention applies to Guatanamo. The Geneva Convention applies only to: a) those countries who signed it and it is further restricted to b) uniformed soldiers who operate as a member of a national army and who are subject to a recognized chain of command. Democrats are involved in a knowing and intentional smear campaign against Gonzalez. Democrats want the public to believe that Gonzalez’ position, which is shared by every legitimate legal scholar in America, that the Geneva Convention does not apply to Guatanamo means that Gonzalez approves torture. That is false, but, it is one effective smear.
CONFLATION OF ABU GHRAIB AND THE GENEVA CONVENTION
Abu Ghraib was recognized as a problem by the military months before that old Democratic hack, Seymour Hersh got involved. The military had already taken steps to stop improper practices and to discipline soldiers who engaged in improper conduct. It was a true non-scandal given the true context of the conflict. A few embarrassing pictures do not torture make. Given the outrageous extent of the torture going on in so many countriers which is totally ignored by the Left, Iran and Syria came to mind, playing up Abu Ghraib was an intentional use of the power of the press to propagandize against the American effort. Abu Ghraib would have been a story IF THE MILITARY HADN”T ALREADY TAKEN ACTION. Given that it did it was not a story of any great import.
DEAN’S POST: QUOTED IMMEDIATELY BELOW CONTAINS FACTUAL ERRORS> THEY ARE EXACTLY THE FACTUAL ERRORS THE DEMOCRATS WANT THE PUBLIC TO BELIEVE ABOUT GONZALES:
Here is Dean’s quote:
Gonzalez was one of the principal architects of the Bush administration?s olicies on methods of interrogation of prisoners. Gonzalez?s opinion that the application pain is not torture, or prohibited, as long as it doesn?t cause death of organ failure, is simply appalling and morally repugnant to every decent American. The Abu Ghraib scandal and the countless other investigations into abusive and sadistic treatment of prisoners, so alarmng that both CIA and FBI agents sent worried memos to their superiors, is the direct result of the lax policies and environment created by Gonzalez and his cohorts.
CONTRARY CORRECT FACTS SUMMARIZED BY POWERLINE BLOG:
All of this heavy breathing is grotesquely misplaced. The two “offenses” with which Gonzales is charged are: 1) he received a memo written by the Justice Department on the question of what conduct would violate a statute that prohibits torture and other cruel and inhumane activity. The Justice Department’s analysis of that statute appears to me to be sound, but, in any event, it was their analysis, not the nominee’s. 2) He received from the Justice Department, and passed on to the President, a memo from the Justice Department on whether the Geneva convention applies to al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners. The Justice Department concluded, and Gonzales agreed, that the Geneva convention does not apply to those prisoners.
That conclusion is obviously correct. There is no colorable reading of the convention under which it would apply to those individuals, as several federal courts have held. The Democratic Senators who questioned Gonzales were not prepared, of course, to dispute this legal conclusion, but they seemed to argue that the administration erred by not pretending that the convention covered terrorists, regardless.
All of this huffing and puffing about the administration’s “pro-torture” policies depends, of course, on ignoring what the administration’s policies actually are. As we’ve pointed out before, President Bush responded to the Justice Department’s memo on the application of the Geneva convention to Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners by agreeing that the convention does not apply, but directing that prisoners be treated humanely in any event. President Bush wrote, on February 7, 2002:
I accept the legal conclusion of the Department of Justice and determine that none of the provisions of Geneva apply to our conflict with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan or elsewhere throughout the world because, among other reasons, Al Qaeda is not a High Contracting Party to Geneva.
Of course, our values as a Nation…call for us to treat detainees humanely, including those who are not legally entitled to such treatment…As a matter of policy, the United States Armed Forces shall continue to treat detainees humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of Geneva.
Further, the Bush administration has always taken the position that the Geneva convention applies to the conflict in Iraq–a position that I think is an excessively broad reading of that treaty, as applied to the current phase of the conflict.
Thus, the substantive criticisms of Alberto Gonzales are frivolous, as is the claim that the Bush administration has promulgated “pro-torture” policies.
But Senatorial harassment of nominees is rarely about policy, and nearly always about politics. The Democrats’ objective, I think, is to tar Gonzales with the Abu Ghraib brush, to give the newspapers grounds to label him as “controversial,” and thereby (in addition to smearing the Bush administration) to lay the groundwork for opposing him should President Bush ever appoint Gonzales to the Supreme Court.
Deacon thinks it is politically foolish for the Democrats to posture themselves as the party that is solicitous for the welfare of captured terrorists. I’m not sure I agree. I do think that the Democrats’ treatment of Gonzales would have damaged them if more people had seen it, but the news accounts, as noted above, generally made the hearing sound as though Gonzales was repentant. The actual transcript, however, shows that Gonzales performed well, as in this exchange with Senator Lindsay Graham:
GONZALES: Senator, there is a lot to respond to in your statement. I would respectfully disagree with your statement that we’re becoming more like our enemy. We are nothing like our enemy, Senator. While we are struggling, mightily, trying to find out what happened at Abu Ghraib, they are beheading people like Danny Pearl and Nick Berg. We are nothing like our enemies, Senator.
But you won’t read anything good about Gonzales’s performance in the newspapers, and I suspect that the revulsion at Abu Ghraib is so universal, and the issues so poorly explained to the public, that associating Gonzales’s name with that episode, no matter how unfairly, may be good politics.
Posted by Hindrocket at 03:01 PM | Permalink | TrackBack (11)
Post 12 Supplies the Actual Memo written by Gonzales
The Democrats do not want the general public to see the actual memo written by Gonzales. They don’t want the public to understand that concluding that Guantanamo does not fall under the Geneva Convention is NOT TANTAMOUNT to endorsing torture.
They don’t want the public to understand that IT WAS THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION who developed the strategy of knowingly delivering prisoners to Egypt and Saudi Arabia so that TORTURE COULD BE CONDUCTED THERE.
I don’t think I have every seen so much lying and distortion in my entire life. If I weren’t a lawyer with access to reputable commentators on the topic I would have no way to sort this out.
Read Gonzales words. Don’t rely on MSN for a summary of the hearings.
Glen Clancy: Right you are
How right you are. There is so much I disagree with in the Bush administration. I fear Bush is going to ram 13 million illegal aliens down our throat with another amnesty, hoping that this will deliver the Hispanic vote to the Republicans, even if it legitimizes thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of jihadis.
Lord help us all.
Kerry: Always Smoozing with the Enemy
Everyone understands that the Baathists in Syria are actively collaborating with the Baathist remnants actively killing American soldiers today.
Given that Syrian Baathists are supporting and giving comfort to Saddamite Baathists who have gone to Syria for refuge, it is only fitting, that TRAITOR IN CHIEF, John Kerry is talking to the Syrian President.
What is he doing? Foreign policy is the domain of the executive branch working through the State Department. Who approved his trip to Syria?
Kerry was recently in Iraq where is complained about decisions that Paul Bremer made over a year ago. Terrific Kerry, let’s continually dwell on things which have been long decided and which cannot be undone. What earthly good did it do anyone to discuss what might have been mistakes that were perpetrated by the Bremer administration. Why discuss it in Iraq? What is done is done. Kerry can’t even make campaign points out of the alleged mistakes now. They are so over. Yet, there was our favorite traitorous horseface, intoning some nonsense about mistakes Bremer allegedly made. What earthly good does this do anyone? Who does Kerry think he is? He is not the President. He shouldn’t be doing foreign policy. He needs a lease and a handler just like his sugar mommy wife.
John Kerry giving Aid and Comfort to the Obvious Enemy
Thank you John for giving aid and comfort to the Arab propagandists who will feature your comments about Iraq.
Yes, I know all about free speech. He has a constitutional right to make an idiot of himself if he wants to, however, he is a Senator. If he has critiques of foreign policy he has the SENATORIAL POWER to work directly to affect our foreign power. You may remember the advertisment aired against Kerry that pointed out that he missed more 70% of the foreign policy committee meetings he was supposed to attend. Perhaps if he had used his SENATORIAL POWER instead of sleeping through his committee meetings our foreign policy could have been…. oh so improved …. by his input.
He doesn’t have to go outside Congress and outside the United States to make statements he knows will be picked up by those antagonistic to our goals. He is an idiot, a plain, flat-out, self-agrandizing idiot. I dearly hope the people of Massachusetts boot him out of office.
I look forward to the Social Security debate as an opportunity for the Democratic party to define itself positively against the Republicans.
Social Security has been one of the government’s most successful programs. It has provided a social safety net for millions of elderly and disabled Americans. The program is consistent, with and advances Christian values which stress the imperative to care for the weakest and most vulnerable our neighbors. Democrats will emerge this year as staunch defenders of the program. Although it faces possible insolvency by 2042, the program can be made solvent for the next 75 years with modest benefit restructing and cash infusions that would amount to less than half the cost of President Bush’s tax cut
One the other side you have George W. Bush’s social darwinist vision of an “ownership society”, but more aptly called a “you’re on your own-ership society”. Mr. Bush’s proposal is actuarially unsound, since it would drain reserves from the social security trust fund and accelerate the program’s insolvency. It is fiscally irresponsible since it would require $2 trillion in additional government borrowing and is tantamount to a person running up their credit cards to put money in their 401-K. It is financially wasteful since it would at least triple the cost of the administrative program with wall street brokerage fees. It is economically unwise since it would weaken the economic security of millions of people in a growing segment of our population, by making that security vulnerable to the vagaries and vicissitudes of the market.
The mendacity that Mr. Bush is employing to promote social security privatization is more egregious than even his so-called intellegence proving the existence of Iraqi WMD. Already Mr, Bush is juxtoposing rosy forecasts for returns from private accounts, based on the most optmistic of economic forecasts, against dire predictions for the social security program as it is now, based on the most pessemistic of economic forecasts.
I may be wrong but I don’t think the American are going to stand for the scam Mr. Bush, the Congressional Republicans, and Wall Street are about to try and pull.
Missourian writes: “Yet, there was our favorite traitorous horseface, intoning some nonsense about mistakes Bremer allegedly made.”
A traitor is one who gives aid to the enemy. Believe me, the enemies of the United States don’t need Kerry’s comments, because they benefit from the massive incompetence of the Bush administration every day. I don’t know what Kerry said about Bremer, but there’s a lot that could be said, in addition to Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and the whole rest of the bungling pack. God only knows how many nice young Americans will come back in body bags or sans limbs because of the extraordinary stupidity and ineptness of the people running the war.
Every time you hear about another dead or maimed American remember YOU voted for the people that made that possible. YOU voted for the remarkably and obviously stupid decisions that give aid and comfort to the people who are actually on the ground killing Americans and Iraqis. So my suggestion is if you want to throw around the “traitor” label take at look at the people YOU voted for. Next time you vote for these dolts and liars mark your ballot with blood to remind yourself of the reality of what you’re doing.
Kerry didn’t cook the intelligence. Kerry didn’t ignore the advice of so many military leaders. Kerry didn’t crawl in bed with Chalabi and the INC. Kerry didn’t ignore the State Department’s post-war plans. Kerry didn’t invade with underwhelming force. Kerry didn’t let post-invasion Iraq collapse into chaos. Kerry didn’t send disaffected and unemployed Iraqi soldiers into the camp of the insurgents. Kerry didn’t fail to control the borders of Iraq. Kerry didn’t fail to secure the ammo dumps. Kerry didn’t fail to provide body armor. Kerry didn’t fail to provide proper armored vehicles.
Next time you decide to post your next diatribe maybe you can remember that.
Jihad Started One Long Time Ago, We just started to Defend ourselves.
Some history Jim, the jihad actually started with Mohammed, but, its most recent excresence was prompted by Jimmah Carter. Starting in 1979 we demonstrated to the Islamists that we would not under any circumstances take effective action against the Islamists. Intellectuals in the West gave cover to the appeasers within the United States and within Europe. Europe has been thoroughly co-opted with Tony Blair scrapping lower and lower to sell out his country’s historic political heritage in favor of a few Muslim votes.
The war begun long before 9/11, we just didn’t choose to recognize it. The incompetence of previous administrations, certainly including Clinton and quite possibly Bush I allowed the cancer to grow. But aside from Mohammed the “root cause” is the pure, unadultered stupidity of Jimmah Carter. A recent biographer published in the West by the son of the late Ayatollah Khomeini revealed that Iran was astounded a the pusilaneous response of America. Jimmah Carter wrote Ayatollah and tried to engage him as a fellow “holy man.” Jimmah, of course, having no appreciation for the fact that the Ayatollah thought Jimmah and all non-Muslims are “unclean.”
Funny how people who supposed support the United Nations were loath to enforce a United Nations resolution. That, my friend, is all the Bush did, enforce a United Nations resolution. Clinton, our philanderer in chief, actually pushed for and obtained passage of a bill in Congress calling for the overthrown of Saddam Hussein. The Dueffler report and the 9/11 report document connections between jihadis and Saddam developing in importance after Gulf War I and before Gulf War II.
If you had been in charge in WWII we never would have won. In over 1 full year of combat we have lost about 1,000 or so soldiers. While the life of every soldier is precious and constitutes a real loss, we lost 2,000 soldiers a week in WWII. The entire strum and drang about casaulties is totally distorted by the press. The press opposes the war and they will never let the war rest, they will never allow the American people to see successes.
I am proud of what America has done in Afghanistan. You would rather swallow a hockey puck than give Bush credit for instituting the FIRST ELECTED GOVERNMENT in Afghanistan. Does Afghanistan resemble Swizterland? No, not quite yet. But 8 million people out of 11 million adults were willing to risk their lives to vote.
Information coming out of Iraq is tough, but, so was the Normandy Invasion and the Inchon Invasion. The price of freedom is blood. The price of the freedom you enjoy now is blood. The day is long gone when we can retreat to behind our borders. The Middle East is a cancer on the planet. There is substantial information to support the idea that Iraqis want to vote in January as much as Afghanis wanted to vote in October. I disagree with Bush on a long list of things but I am not ashamed now, nor will I ever be that America has fought the worst dictators in the world. We are fighting the right people. We are helping the right people. Woe be to the world if we lose. A dark curtain would descend on the world. Sometimes we have to fight for what is right, even though the odds look long and the cost is high. If we shrink from this fight we will pay a bitter price and so will our descendants.
I say we should take whatever action we need to take to wipe the scourge of Al-Zaqhwari off the planet. If we need to commission Kurdish peshmerga to start undercover operations, them let them do it. There is no refuge from this war, Jim. The war is on and it is beyond anyone’s power to call it off. You just notice now because we are fighting back.
Wherever you find America’s Enemies you Find John Kerry
I had the distinctly unfortunate luck to be a student on a campus which had an active Viet Nam Veterans Against the War. I read the leaflets they handed out on campus. I stopped and listened to their speakers on soapboxes. I know exactly who these people were. Their first and only purpose was to blacken the honor of the United States military and convince the American people that the war was unwinnable.
John Kerry was in the thick of it all. He was a planner and a strategist. He is and was an inverterate liar who has gotten away with virtual murder and built a career on it. I would be happy to met up with him in Court as a prosecutor and prove my case.
In the old days he was meeting with the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese while we had men in their prisons and men fighting in the field. Now he meets with Syria. I expect a trip to Iran next.
Repeating the Charges of a Politicized Press.
We have seen enough evidence of the total politicization of reporting to know that a great deal of what is being called “mistakes” in Iraq, may well not be what they seem. It will probably take years to sort that all out. Have we made mistakes? Probably. I doubt anyone here has the independent military acumen to evaluate the press reports.
I have the independent legal acumen to evalute the press reports concerning Gonzalez and I can say that there is a very vicious schmear going on. Given that and many other documented instances, say… Rathergate… it is somewhat difficult to give much credence to reporting on military matters.
I will remind you that R. W. Apple the dahlin of the Left and a reporter/columnist of with the New York Times predicted a military quagmire in Afghanistan. It took our forces 3 weeks and remarkably few casualties to take care of that one. Yes, Iraq is more difficult, but, if we perservere we can win. If we pull out prematurely, we will literally have hell to pay.
So, yes, I will stand by the decision and accept responsibility for the casaulties. We have suffered fewer than 1200 casaulties in more than a year of war. We lost 50,000 in Viet Nam before John Kerry and his ilk make their deaths meaningless. It isn’t the supporters of victory that would makes these deaths meaningless, it is John Kerry. The same John Kerry that threw the “symbols of his country” over the fence. The same John Kerry that made mockery of the heroes whose names are carved in the wall of the Viet Nam Memorial. He is not worthy to stand next to that wall to salute them.
The Truman Decision: How different it is when the question is no longer academic, when it is life and death for millions and perhaps a nation.
From Powerline with sources from NRO
the fundamental lack of seriousness of the three witnesses trotted out by the Democrats on Friday to oppose the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales. None of the three — not Douglas Johnson (a torture victims advocate), John Hutson (Judge Advocate General during the Clinton administration), or Harold Koh (dean of the Yale Law School) — was willing to take on in a serious way the question of whether torture is permissible in the following situation: a bomb is about to be detonated in a major metropolitan area, and the military has as a captive a known terrorist who, we have reason to believe, has knowledge which would allow us to save hundreds of thousands of lives if we could get him to provide it.
Like the Democratic Senator who invited them to appear, these experts wish only to make high-minded pronounements and, more likely than not, to embarrass the president — they have no desire to think about the tough issues inherent in the debate over interrogation techniques. As McCarthy puts it:
A number of us have tried to grapple with the hard stuff about the war against terrorists ? the intersection between abiding respect for human dignity and the imperative of pressing for intelligence that might save human life. We don’t pretend that this is easy, that it’s black-and-white, or that expressly licensing coercive interrogation ? even a minimal form of torture ? in the most dire situations would not potentially open the door to human-rights abuses that should be universally condemned. It would. That’s why it needs to be thought through with sensitivity.
But the critics should do us all a favor: If you’re going to talk the talk of righteous indignation, be ready to walk the walk. Be ready to tell Americans exactly what protections you want to give to the terrorists. Be ready to tell Americans that you would prohibit coercive interrogation even if it were the only way of saving a hundred thousand of them.
If you’re not ready to do that ? because you full well understand that your position is not one even you can defend when the questions get hard ? then don’t waste our time. Get out of the way of serious people like Judge Gonzales. People who don’t pretend to be perfect, who don’t claim to have all the answers, and who are not so smug that they think they can afford to take life-and-death options off the table ? even as they pray they will never have to use them.
*****************************************************************************************
Judge Gonzalez is called “serious” by this author, not because he supports torture, but, because he has seriously grappled with the problem, as, of course, the academics have not. Being an academic means never having to say you are sorry for bad policy.
Dean writes:
“One the other side you have George W. Bush’s social darwinist vision of an ‘ownership society’, but more aptly called a ‘you’re on your own-ership society’.”
Social darwinist? It’s rhetorical excesses like this that make your posts lack credibility — a lot like your earlier point that even if even if facts are proven false, the argument they ostensibly supported is still true. If you want to make a point, argue ideas. A tone of moralistic outrage is not the same thing as rational argumentation. Again, tame that wagging finger.
Father Jacobse: You are right. I couldn’t resist the play on words, but I guess I should have. I edited out the a reference to social security “piratization”, but should have taken out the other one as well.
There are two competing philosophies regarding the relationship of the government with the individual that will emerge in the upcoming social security debate. They deserve more serious treatment than to be made the object of sarcastic puns and jibes.
Missourian writes: “We have suffered fewer than 1200 casaulties in more than a year of war. We lost 50,000 in Viet Nam before John Kerry and his ilk make their deaths meaningless.”
When comparing casualties between the wars you have realize that the survival rate for wounded soldiers is higher now that during the Vietnam war due to better evacuation and advanced trauma care. You also have better body armor and better armored vehicles. Also, we have fewer than one-third the number of troops in Iraq than we had in Vietnam at the height of the war. If you’re interested, here’s an interesting article on comparing casualties in Vietnam and Iraq:
http://slate.msn.com/id/2111432/
Now concerning Vietnam, I have a hard time understsanding how John Kerry is somehow responsible for making the deaths in Vietnam meaningless, unless you attribute to him some kind of supernatural demonic force. Nixon was president the last four years that the U.S. had troops in Vietnam. He defeated George McGovern, an anti-war candidate, by historic margins. But by then the Vietnamization program was already well along. It seems to me that if you wanted to blame someone for ending the Vietnam war, it would be Richard Nixon, since he was in office at the time, and it was his plan that was being implemented.
Note 4: I must have touched a nerve. Where, exactly, did I imply that “[t]he role of the Democratic party is to be a Soviet-Style ‘rubber stamp'”? My point was that Democratic Party is so beholden to the hard Left that it refuses to learn a lesson even when it is staring them in the faces. Case in point:
In a January 2nd article in the New York Times Adam Nagourney writes, “Presidential elections often produce a clear story line, a lesson for winners and losers alike. Not this one, at least not yet … ”
He goes on to point out that “Joe Manchin, the new governor of West Virginia, a Democrat whose anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, anti-gun-control views lifted him to a double-digit victory even as Mr. Kerry lost his state by 13 points, said last week that he had little doubt about why Democrats lost the presidency and seats in the House and Senate.”
And yet Mr. Nagourney writes (and the New York Times publishes) a categorical statement that despite the fact that voters in many states overwhelmingly approved of bills that define marriage as a union of one man and one woman there is no lesson to be learned from this.
In fact, Nancy Pelosi, the article reports, says, “I don’t subscribe to any of these notions that we have to examine our conscience as to who we are…”
And Democrats wonder why they keep losing.
That’s right, do absolutely nothing that might upset San Francisco’s Castro District, Washington D.C.’s Dupont Circle and New York City’s Greenwich Village and you’re sure to be carried to the seats of power in the federal government. What world do these people live in?
When Chile allowed citizens to invest their government directed pension funds as they chose, rates of return increased dramatically. Some facts comparing the American government run pension plan with the Chilean system:
– A single U.S. male with average earnings, born in 1937, has realized only a 1.6 percent annual rate of return on funds he was forced to turn over to Social Security.
– Between 1981 — when private pension plans were implemented in Chile — and 1998, Chilean workers have realized an 11 percent rate of return, inflation adjusted, on their private accounts.
– The average retiree from Chile’s private system gets a pension that is roughly 80 percent of his mean annual income over the final decade of his working life.
President Bush “favors voluntary personal accounts for younger workers. Personal accounts provide ownership, choice, and the opportunity for workers to build a nest egg for their retirement and to pass on to their spouse or their children.”
1.6% return versus 11%. Dean, if 1.6% looks good to you, by all means keep giving your money to the feds. I won’t stop you. But let me put my money where I like. I’d much rather have the 11%. That 11% is even from “tightly regulate[d] private pension-fund firms … require[d] … to invest conservatively.” They’re tightly regulated, Dean. Doesn’t that warm your heart?
“Privatize” social security? Far from it. Allowing younger workers to invest only portion of their total payroll tax (a number I heard is something like less than 2%) is not privatization. Besides the key word to the President’s proposal is “VOLUNTARY”. If you want to keep sending your retirement money to DC, by all means, feel free. Why not dump all investments, 401k’s, etc. send the money to DC and let the feds handle your retirement?
Why does the Left get so bent out of shape when individual persons want to control their own money and their own lives? And perhaps someone can explain to me where, in the Constitution, the Federal Government is given the power to tell me how take care of my family when I retire?
Daniel states: “My point was that Democratic Party is so beholden to the hard Left that it refuses to learn a lesson even when it is staring them in the faces.”
In fact, had the Democrats decided to push to limit marriage to one man and one woman (while not being so impudent as to suggest it be limited to only one per lifetime which would horribly inconvenience the heterosexual majority!), they still would have lost.
The fact of the matter is that the Department of Homeland Hysteria has successfully managed to keep us in a perpetual state of anxiety since 9/11; George Bush is from Texas, which has more guns per capita than it does even Bibles. We needed someone with a convincing war face, and John Kerry just wasn’t going to make us feel warm and secure.
James, let’s assume for a moment that what you say is true, that “had the Democrats decided to push to limit marriage to one man and one woman … they still would have lost”, please explain Joe Manchin, the new Democrat governmer of West Virginia. He won easily in a state John Kerry lost by 13 points.
Joe Manchin’s victory in West Virginia shows that when Democrats reject the Leftist victicrat ideology they win. I have heard it reported that Barack Obama won because, in addition to facing a Republican opponent that had no business being on the ballot, is actually speaking of, God forbid, personal responsibility.
These two individuals show us that when Democrats turn their backs on the likes of Michael Moore and George Soros, they can win. I would think that is something you could agree with, presuming you can get beyond your disgust with Republicans. (FYI, hatred doesn’t win elections.)
Manchin probably knew that by living in a state with large numbers of vehicles with mounted gun racks, it would be imprudent to appear too sympathetic to the negligible percentage of gays who like to live dangerously by moving anywhere south of Cincinnati, Ohio.
Perhaps you’re right …
(Actually I’m not anti-Republican. I oppose unlimited abortion access, favor lowered taxes in general and would prefer greater responsibility in government spending. I just find it unfortunate that one can no longer raise valid questions about our administration without being called “anti-American”, “anti-faith” or “anti-family”.)
Daniel: I will explain some of the problems with Preident Bush’s proposal calmly and rationally as Father Jacobse urged. I look forward to your reply.
Problem One: Financing private investment accounts for Social Security beneficiaries is problematic. There are two options:
(a.) We fund the private accounts by borrowing two trillion dollars. However the United States national debt is already large and growing at a rate that alarms international creditors. The increased borrowing could precipitate a crash of the dollar, and sharply higher interest rates, causing an economic crisis. Increased borrowing would also severely decrease our national savings rate by diverting even more of our national savings to federal borrowing and payments the hundreds of billions in interest on the national debt.
Some economists have compared borrowing two trillion dollars to fund private investment accounts to a person running up thousands of dollars in credit card debt to get money for their 401-K fund. Do you know any financial advisors who would recommend that?
(b.) We can fund private accounts by diverting 4% of the 6% of each person’s social security payroll deductions away from the social security trust fund and into their private investment account instead. This method has been sharply criticized by the American Academy of Actuaries. Under President Reagan the federal government began collecting MORE payroll savings than were needed for current outlays in order to build a surplus or cushion to tide the program over when the baby boomers retire and the ration of workers to retirees falls.
Currently payments into the trust fund our forecast to equal outlays sometime in 2018, and the surplus itself is scheduled to be exhausted by 2042. Diverting payroll deductions from the trust fund and into private accounts would cause the surplus in the social security trust fund to run out much sooner than that however, bringing the crisis upon us much sooner. The only way then to postpone that crisis is to drastically cut back on scheduled benefits, leaving retirees in a much more precarious financial position.
The cost of making the program solvent for the next 75 years is much less than some of President Bush’s other initiatives. According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities: “Specifically, the Social Security shortfall over that 75-year period is projected to be 0.4 percent of GDP (according to CBO) or 0.7 percent of GDP (according to the Social Security Trustees). In contrast, the tax cuts will cost 2.0 percent of GDP over that period, based on cost estimates from CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation. (Experts from the Brookings Institution and other leading organizations have produced a similar estimate.) The Medicare drug benefit will cost 1.4 percent of GDP, according to the Medicare Trustees.
The reality is that the Social Security shortfall, while sizeable, is not gargantuan. It can be closed without undermining the program?s basic structure, through a mixture of modest benefit reductions and revenue increases phased in over several decades.”
http://www.cbpp.org/press-points.htm
James, make all the substantive criticisms of Pres. Bush and his administration you like. However, when you make juvenile comments like, “Department of Homeland Hysteria has successfully managed to keep us in a perpetual state of anxiety since 9/11” (It is not a “state of anxiety”. We are at war with Islamofascists, which makes it a state of war.); and “George Bush is from Texas, which has more guns per capita than it does even Bibles” (This is so inane it doesn’t deserve comment) one can only presume that you have serious problems with Republicans, if not at least Pres. Bush.
Dean, lets just deal with point A first. When the federal government does not tax earnings, it is not “borrowing” money. The money we earn through our labor belongs to us, not to the federal government. The modest social security proposal would simply allow young workers to invest less than 2% of future payroll taxes in private investment accounts. This is not “borrowed” money. Social Security funds already collected through payroll taxes remains where it is (which is usually in some Senator or Representative?s pork barrel project). The only way one can believe that not taking someone?s earnings through taxation is “borrowing” is if one believes that the money never belonged to the worker in the first place. That what you and I earn, day to day, in fact, belongs to the federal government, which it can redistribute as it chooses. Do you seriously believe, as it appears, that what I earn actually belongs to the government, and it then gets to decide how much I will be allowed to keep? I reject your assumption that not taxing someone’s earnings is “borrowing” against what the federal government already owns.
It is true that Social Security funds already collected have been spent by Congress on a bunch of wastefull projects, and all that sits behind the Social Security statement I, and every worker, receive periodically are a bunch of IOUs. That is a serious problem. I’m not certain how to solve that problem, but I do know that simply raising taxes, or raising the retirement age (standard Democrat boiler plate on how to “deal” with the Social Security problem) won’t do it.
Since you are an avid opponent of fundamental Social Security reform, perhaps you can tell me where the Constitution gives Congress the authority to run a national pension plan.
Daniel: I would like to respond to two of your statements:
You say “When the federal government does not tax earnings, it is not ‘borrowing’ money.”
I would respond that when government does not match tax cuts with spending cuts, but passes on the cost of current government operations to future generations it IS borrowing. Tax cuts that result in deficits are not tax cuts at all – they are tax SHIFTS – they shift the burden of paying for our government services to our children.
You say “It is true that Social Security funds already collected have been spent by Congress on a bunch of wastefull projects, and all that sits behind the Social Security statement I, and every worker, receive periodically are a bunch of IOUs.”
In fact, those “IOUs” are US Treasury Securities and if there is a problem with them, a potential for default,then we all in trouble because they are what is financing our deficit right now and nearly one-quarter of all government operations. Over 51% of US Treasury Bonds and Bills are purchased by foreign investors and if they ever began to believe that those securities were “worthless IOUS as many conservatives have maintained, then they would stop financing our deficit, and interest rates in the US would soar as result.
Among “wasteful government projects” you could number the $200 billion fiasco in Iraq, the $600 billion Medicare Drug benefit, and the Bush administration’s massive increase in farm suibsidies, all passed by Republicans. In fact after shrinking under President Clinton, the size of government has grown faster under President Bush than at any other time since the Viet Nam war.
Dean, interesting that you would point out that under Pres. Reagan the federal government began collecting more payroll taxes. Then you assert that a tax cut would undermine the funds available for the so-called Social Security trust fund.
I believe, the Reagan Administration obtained those gains because it cut taxes. When the government doesn’t take our money, people can spend and invest as they see fit, businesses grow, hire more workers and, wa la, more taxpayers and more payroll taxes for the so-called Social Security trust fund.
Allowing young workers to directly invest a portion of their payroll taxes would increase the tax base by increasing the number of workers, since when money is invested in business, businesses grow and then hire more workers. It would be good for those investing, it would be good for business and it would be good for retirees.
On Dean’s list of wasteful projects:
“$200 billion fiasco in Iraq” – Not wastefull because this is what the federal government is mandated to do in the Constitution: I.e., provide for the defense of the United States through the prudential application of military force. I think Iraq is a matter of national security, and Dean does not. On that issue there’s not much point in excessive discussion, we’ll never see eye to eye.
“the $600 billion Medicare Drug benefit” – agreed, the Federal Constitution does not authorized Congress to spend collected taxes on items like this. This is a waste of our money.
“massive increase in farm suibsidies” – agreed, again unconstitutional spending.
You’re not going to get much of an argument from me that the Republicans have taken a long draw on federal pork. I can think of a lot of reasons for this, not the least of which is that the Congress has been rather evenly split (Senate 1 seat difference & House less then 20, I think, differenc). And Democrats have blocked most if not all attempts at spending reduction. Though weak Republicans, afraid that they might be demonized as promoting heartless spending cuts, have not helped. None of this is to excuse unconstitutional spending programs, just explain it.
It would be very nice to see Pres. Bush exercise his veto pen on unconstitutional spending programs.
My list of wasteful programs would include anything run by:
Department of Education, Department of Agriculture, IRS, NEH, NIH, NEA, HHS, a good chunk of the State Department, USAID, …
Cut those departments and what would we be looking at in savings? Are you with me, Dean? 😉 Come on, lets get serious about cutting spending, and stop monkeying around the edges.
Dan, I partially agree with you. I would agree that government agencies are inherently inefficient, and need to learn how to provide services and deliver value to taxpayers much more efficiently. Two Californians have written a book on how to do this.
See “Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit Is Transforming the Public Sector”, by Osborne and Gabler. http://www.scottlondon.com/reviews/osborne.html
The authors argue, governments should: 1) steer, not row (or as Mario Cuomo put it, “it is not government’s obligation to provide services, but to see that they’re provided”); 2) empower communities to solve their own problems rather than simply deliver services; 3) encourage competition rather than monopolies; 4) be driven by missions, rather than rules; 5) be results-oriented by funding outcomes rather than inputs; 6) meet the needs of the customer, not the bureaucracy; 7) concentrate on earning money rather than spending it; 8) invest in preventing problems rather than curing crises; 9) decentralize authority; and 10) solve problems by influencing market forces rather than creating public programs.
.. Osborne and Gaebler are careful to point out that while much of what is discussed in the book could be summed up under the category of market-oriented government, markets are only half the answer. Markets are impersonal, unforgiving, and, even under the most structured circumstances, inequitable, they point out. As such, they must be coupled with “the warmth and caring of families and neighborhoods and communities.” They conclude that entrepreneurial governments must embrace both markets and community as they begin to shift away from administrative bureaucracies.”
I would disagree that all the services provided by the government agencies you cite, are unnecessary. The US Department of Agriculture inspects meat for example; would you want to eat meat that has not been tested? The question is how can the USDA assure safe meat in the least expensive and least burdensome manner possible.
Abortion: Core Value of the Democrat Party
WASHINGTON – The chairman of the Massachusetts Democratic Party said Monday that it would be “extremely foolish” for Democrats to chose someone who opposes abortion rights to lead the party.
Phil Johnston, who heads the Democrats in losing presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry (news – web sites)’s home state, spoke out amid news of former Rep. Tim Roemer’s decision to seek the national party’s chairmanship.
“The fact that we lost the 2004 presidential race by a narrow margin should not result in the abandonment of our party’s core principles,” Johnston said.
Note 25
John Kerry made the deaths meaningless because he advocated capitulation to the the North Vietnamese. We capitulated and withdrew. We then, with the full support and urging of John Kerry, rejected a request from South Viet Nam to help them respond to a full armored invasion by the regular North Vietnamese Army. More than 1 million Vietnamese were killed after theinvasion by the Communists.
Our heroes in Viet Nam died fighting Communism. Something you give little weight to even as fellow Christians languish in Vietnamese prisons. Our Vietnamese allies suffered unspeakable fates in Communist prisons after the invastion.
John Kerry actively worked for this result and he has shown to remorse for it. John Kerry was indistinguishable from the North Vietnamese propaganda machine. He was an arm of the North Vietnames propaganda machine. He is responsible for millions of deaths at the hand of Communists in the Southeast Asia. He worked hard for those deaths and he stands culpable for them.
Sorry about referring to him as “horseface” I will simply refer to him as a traitor from now on.
This is a social issues web site, but if we are only going to make posts that are devoid of Christian and Orthodox insight in addressing the issues, IMO, those posts miss the point not to mention boring and pointless.
Missourian writes: “John Kerry made the deaths meaningless because he advocated capitulation to the the North Vietnamese. We capitulated and withdrew.”
First and more important, John Kerry was one of millions of people in the U.S. who opposed the Vietnam war. His opposition was informed by his personal experiences there. You may recall that there were many people who opted not to serve in Vietnam, including the president and many of his staff. If Vietnam was such a great idea there sure were a lot of people who opted not to go there.
As I said, Richard Nixon was the president during the last four years that the U.S. was in Vietnam. Nixon, not Kerry, was the president at that time. HE, not Kerry, was the commander-in-chief. HE, not Kerry, set in motion the process of Vietnamization. HE, not Kerry, approved the conditions under which the U.S. exited. To lay the exit of the U.S. from Vietnam at the feet of Kerry is simply bizarre. It’s as if this 20-something kid was the real power pulling the strings of government, and Richard Nixon, Kissinger, et al were just puppets dancing under the control of Kerry. I mean, come on.
Also, you assume that a continued application of U.S. military power in Vietnam would eventually have been successful. Unfortunately, there never was a popular government in the south that the U.S. was defending. Robert McNamara said in his memoir that they knew from the start that without a non-corrupt, popular government in S. Vietnam all of our efforts would come to naught there.
Concerning the million people killed after the war, the best estimate of Vietnamese casualties *during* the war is that of around 1 million combatants, and perhaps as many as 4 million non-combatants — though of course exact figures will never be known. But the point is that many people were being killed during the course of the war itself, and continuing the war would have continued the killing. Your perspective perhaps is that it’s better to kill someone accidentally than intentionally, but for the person thus extinguished that is probably not a very important distinction.
History Exists as an Independent Phenomenon: Not Just What you Would Like to Believe
Jim Holman writes:
First and more important, John Kerry was one of millions of people in the U.S. who opposed the Vietnam war. His opposition was informed by his personal experiences there. You may recall that there were many people who opted not to serve in Vietnam, including the president and many of his staff. If Vietnam was such a great idea there sure were a lot of people who opted not to go there.
Missourian replies:
The issue is the conduct of John Kerry. The issue is the impact of the policies that he consistently advocated.
John Kerry’s personal experiences in Viet Nam were very, very limited. He volunteered for Swift Boats under the misapprehension that they (the Swift boats) would not come very near to the Coast of Viet Name and therefore he (Kerry) would not be exposed to much combat. Kerry guessed wrong. Four months as a Lieutenant Junior Grade in the Navy, engaging in a few skirmishes, does make him a deep thinker on the military strategy of the Viet Nam War.
You totally ignore John Kerry’s very active leadership of the Viet Nam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). You consistently fail to acknowledge the Kerry invested several years of hard effort in the VVAW. You consistently fail to acknolwedge the it was John Kerry who ORGANIZED THE WINTER SOLDIER CONVENTION then after he had elicted the “testimony” he wanted, it was JOhn Kerry who took the bougs Winter Solider testimony to Washington and gave it wider circulation through his revolting performance at the Congressional hearing.
While it came to be true that other Americans opposed the Viet Nam War, few other Americans did the following:
A) organized a fraudulent convention of fake Viet Name veterans called the Winter Solider to make up out of whole cloth allegations of war crimes
B)worked tirelessly to publicize the false testimony of the fake veterans
C)actively collaborated with the enemies of the United States through TWO visits to
Paris to meet with the North Vietnamese delegation and the Viet Cong. Kerry took the “seven points” developed by the North Vietnamese back with him to America. and advocated these talking point through VVAW consistently for several years.
D) wrote a book called the “The New Soldier” which featured hippies desecrating the American flag and American military uniforms.
E) actively argued that the United States should disengaged in Viet Nam BEFORE VIET NAM made a full accounting of American prisoners of war
F) served on a committee which effectively brought to a final close the investigation of many sightings of American prisoners in Viet Nam.
G)suggested in public many times that the Communists could be trusted to participated peacefully in elections.
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Jim Holman writes:
As I said, Richard Nixon was the president during the last four years that the U.S. was in Vietnam. Nixon, not Kerry, was the president at that time. HE, not Kerry, was the commander-in-chief. HE, not Kerry, set in motion the process of Vietnamization. HE, not Kerry, approved the conditions under which the U.S. exited. To lay the exit of the U.S. from Vietnam at the feet of Kerry is simply bizarre. It?s as if this 20-something kid was the real power pulling the strings of government, and Richard Nixon, Kissinger, et al were just puppets dancing under the control of Kerry. I mean, come on.
Missourian replies: Let me see, John Kerry creates false testimony implicating the American armed forces in war crimes. He then spends YEARS as a leader in the VVAW. As a leader of the VVAW, he promotes the idea that American forces were monsters. VVAW was the entity which was most responsibile for the image of Viet Nam veterans as crazy child killers.
John Kerry was not some “twenty something kid.” He was a leader of the anti-American anti-war movement. He participated in hundreds of rallies and hundreds of meetings. He did this as part of a calculated political effort to advance his personal political career over the reputations of his fellow sailors, soldiers, marines and airmen.
John Kerry traveled to Paris to MEET WITH THE ENEMY and to ADVANCE THE POSITION OF THE ENEMY IN THE UNITED STATES.
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Jim Holman writes:
Also, you assume that a continued application of U.S. military power in Vietnam would eventually have been successful. Unfortunately, there never was a popular government in the south that the U.S. was defending. Robert McNamara said in his memoir that they knew from the start that without a non-corrupt, popular government in S. Vietnam all of our efforts would come to naught there.
Missourian replies:
We now have some histories and autobiographies available from people active in the North Vietnames cause during the war. High ranking officials of the North Vietnamese Army have stated in PRINT that they considered the Tet Offensive to be a military failure and had the United States prevailed, instead of retreated, North Vietnam would not have been able to hold up much longer.
Many years will have to pass before Robert McNamara’s role in the Viet Nam war will be clear. As I noted, the world is beginning to obtain documents from North Vietnam that shed light on what happened. It is a truism to state that the South Vietnames wanted a non-corrupt government. The corruption of the South Vietname governments varied by government, there were several in power during our time there. There remained a core of patriotic Vietnamese willing to work unselfishly for their government. As bad a drug dealing, cronyism and prostitution is … it is better than the totalitarian death camps of the communists.
Our abandonement of the patriotic Vietnamese who risked their lives to resist Communism was an historic blot of shame on our country.
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Jim Holman writes:
Concerning the million people killed after the war, the best estimate of Vietnamese casualties *during* the war is that of around 1 million combatants, and perhaps as many as 4 million non-combatants ? though of course exact figures will never be known. But the point is that many people were being killed during the course of the war itself, and continuing the war would have continued the killing. Your perspective perhaps is that it?s better to kill someone accidentally than intentionally, but for the person thus extinguished that is probably not a very important distinction.
Missourian replies: I think the most amazing form of denial that I have ever witnesses is the total blank that former anti-war liberals draw on the events following the abandonement of Viet Nam by the United States. It is important to distinguish between people dying in a war and people who are rounded up after hostilities have ceased by the Communists.
Please note that you have refused to squarely face the fact that it was the Communists who, after the military hostilites were over, rounded up millions of South Vietnamese and drove them to miserable deaths in concentration camps in South Viet Nam. No where do you acknowledge that.
No where do you acknowledge that in the famous TV debates John Kerry stated that he was confident that nothing bad would happen after the United States left. There would be no bloodbath and the Communists would participate in free elections. The “root cause” here is that John Kerry didn’t in his heart of hears, think that Communism was so bad. One of his famous quotes is “you can’t fight Communism, all over the world.” Will not only can you fight Communism all over the world, we did and we prevailed.
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Why Should We Be Surprised that Liberals Should Resist Anti-Communism.
Liberals, as denominated in this century and the 20th century, loathe free markets and seek to impose heavy government control over markets. As government control over markets grows, so does government control over employment and people’s lives.
Productive people who accumulate wealth honestly are demonized. Anti-social elements such as criminals are made out to be victims.
The Left opposed the Viet Nam War because they truly in their hearts sided with Communism. The Left was more comfortable with Communism than with free markets. Communism was something they were very compatible with. They didn’t think the war was right because they didn’t think Communism was wrong.
Kerry agreed to meet with Communists and to bring their propaganda to America using his status as a veteran. He is a Communist sympathizer in the truest sense of the word. He did not want to fight Communism anywhere. He claimed that comm
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Note 37: Interesting list, Dean
“governments should:
1) steer, not row (or as Mario Cuomo put it, “it is not government’s obligation to provide services, but to see that they’re provided”);”
Government should steer business & private charity? And what effect exactly do you think that would have on these organizations? More efficient delivery of service? We already agree that government isn?t efficient, so why would it be a good thing to have an inefficient organization direct other far more efficient organizations? Furthermore, when the government tells an organization it has to do something, and that organization fails to comply, the government punishes it, forcing the it to comply. Mario Cuomo’s idea strikes me as a recipe of a tyrannical welfare state. Nowhere in the Constitution is the authority given to the United States Congress or President to control drug pricing in order to “see that proper medical care is provided” and that companies that fail to comply will be punished.
“2) empower communities to solve their own problems rather than simply deliver services;”
The best way that government “empowers communities to solve their own problems” is to get out of the way. In education some of the most educated students in America today are home-schooled. When black communities struggle to get school voucher programs started, in order to get students out of failing public schools, government steps in and limits the extent of the program. And that?s when government doesn?t shut down the program entirely, thereby keeping black Americans “down on the farm.”
“3) encourage competition rather than monopolies;”
Government, itself, is a monopoly. It is rather odd to ask a monopoly to encourage competition. Take mail service, for example. FedEx, UPS, DHL, etc. all ship packages much more efficiently than the USPS; and yet the federal government absolutely refuses to allow them to deliver what it defines as “first-class mail”. This is despite the fact that these private companies could do it cheaper and more efficiently than the USPS. And allowing private companies to deliver the mail would actually create incredible opportunities for private entrepreneurship. Besides if you really believed this you would support the Social Security reforms proposed by Pres. Bush that allows competition for young workers retirement funds.
“4) be driven by missions, rather than rules;”
I would have to know what is meant by missions to rebut this. However, the only thing government can do is enforce rules. That’s what it is designed to do, and that is what’s its constitutionally mandated to do.
“5) be results-oriented by funding outcomes rather than inputs;”
What does “funding outcomes” mean? Does it mean that the money an agency gets depends on the results it achieves? By that definition the Department of Education should have been de-funded a long time ago. Yet all we hear from the Left is the reason for poor results is lack of money. So we poor more and more money into education and the public schools get worse and worse. The same goes for all the tax money flowing into our public colleges and universities, which have become little more than Leftist indoctrination centers.
“6) meet the needs of the customer, not the bureaucracy;”
When we walk into the halls of government we do so as citizens of a polis, not customers at a service counter. The Founding Fathers, no doubt, roll in their graves when they hear American citizens refer to their relationship with government as one of customers to a service provider. If you don’t understand the difference between being a customer and being a citizen, then there may not be much point in continuing on this particular thread (and we can get back to debating what a horrid, evil creature you think Pres. Bush is 😉 ).
“7) concentrate on earning money rather than spending it;”
Government cannot earn money because it doesn’t produce anything. Government can only take and then give back, if it so chooses. Besides, would you use a plumber who told you to give him $1,000.00 before he came to your house to see what the problem is? No, of course not. Yet that is how government works. It takes our money, and then looks for ways to spend it.
“8) invest in preventing problems rather than curing crises;”
This is a recipe for the Nanny State. Many Americans think that second-hand smoke is a problem. Many other Americans do not. Who is the government going to side with (the so-called science on second-hand smoke is not as conclusive as you may think)? Today, government has sided with those who think second-hand smoke is a problem. The result: Government puts a woman in jail because she smoked around her children. As C. S. Lewis has written the worst tyranny is the one that acts out of what it thinks is best for you. It is a recipe for tyranny to let the government “prevent problems”. It is the role of individual persons and families to prevent problems. It is the role of government to punish rule breakers.
“9) decentralize authority;”
Think about this very long and very hard. You will find that what you are in fact arguing for is privatization and the principle of subsidiarity, that would make every other point on your list moot.
“10) solve problems by influencing market forces rather than creating public programs.”
When you reflect on this long enough you will realize that it is nonsensical. First of all it contradicts item 9. When government gets involved in influencing the market it is, in fact, centralizing authority within itself by simply deciding which part of a market is allowed to function and which is not. The market then bows to what government wants, not what its customers want.
Furthermore, when the government tries to influencing something it must create a public program designed to do the “influencing”. Going back to education, the Dept. of Education was designed, arguably, to influence the delivery of education. Has education in America improved? I don’t think so.
And, again, it is not the role of government to run around trying to solve our problems. With the grace of God and the strength of Christ, I will do everything I can to solve my own problems, thank you very much. And if there’s something I think I need help with, I will call my family, friends, church, priest, business associates, private charity, etc. long before I call the Federal Government. I am not a victim who needs the government to ride in and save me.
Try repeating that phrase: “I am not a victim”, and you will go a long way in realizing that you don’t need the government to solve your problems.
Missourian writes: “You totally ignore John Kerry’s very active leadership of the Viet Nam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). You consistently fail to acknowledge the Kerry invested several years of hard effort in the VVAW. You consistently fail to acknolwedge the it was John Kerry who ORGANIZED THE WINTER SOLDIER CONVENTION then after he had elicted the ‘testimony’ he wanted, it was JOhn Kerry who took the bougs Winter Solider testimony to Washington and gave it wider circulation through his revolting performance at the Congressional hearing.”
Good theory about Kerry being responsible for the departure from Vietnam, but your timeline is all wrong.
Troop levels by year, United States:
Year US Forces
1959 760
1960 900
1961 3205
1962 11300
1963 16300
1964 23300
1965 184300
1966 385300
1967 485600
1968 536100
1969 475200 – Nixon’s Vietnamization policy begins in June
1970 334600
1971 156800
1972 24200
1973 50
http://members.aol.com/warlibrary/vwatl.htm
John Kerry Timeline:
Release from Active Duty: January 1970
Winter Soldier – Kerry’s testimony before Congress: March 1971
I hate to ruin your diatribe, but the U.S. was headed out of Vietnam long before Kerry took the stage, almost two years before. Thus, his comments about someone not wanting to be the last man to die for a mistake. The U.S. was already getting out. The war was already a no-go. But from 1969 – 1973 another 5,000 soldiers were killed and almost 100,000 wounded. And this after we knew we were leaving.
So under your theory of moral accountability it looks like a Republican administration was actually responsible for the post-war murder of a million people.
Note 32 (Daniel): You have me and Jim H confused I think. I never mentioned Social Security reform. I will tell you this about SS, though:
I’d recommend a “sliding” approach to Social Security. That is, a certain percentage (or dollar amount) is kept in the general Social Security fund as it is now (no change). Beyond that, contributors will have an incremental degree of control over how their SS funds are invested. Yes, there is more potential for money for those who contribute more. But this way, smart investors can make more while not shutting out the less skilled entirely.
I think people should largely be responsible for their own retirement income. Most people have 30+ years to invest in 401Ks, IRAs, etc. With people living longer, we are also going to have to raise the retirement age to 67, I think which should stretch the fund a bit longer.
Social Security should be viewed, in my opinion, as a safety net, not a prime source of income. Nevertheless, we must realize that there are many on the bottom end of the wage scale who simply cannot save enough to live on when their incomes rarely break $20,000 a year. These are often the same people who do not have the financial savvy to know how to invest, and thus should not be in full control of how the SS funds are managed.
Michael writes: “This is a social issues web site, but if we are only going to make posts that are devoid of Christian and Orthodox insight in addressing the issues, IMO, those posts miss the point not to mention boring and pointless.”
You may recall that I’m not Orthodoxy, but interested in understanding the Orthodox viewpoint. In fact, I would be happy to hear more about Orthodoxy here.
In most of what I’ve read, Orthodoxy transcends any particular political point of view. Here on the blog most of the political opinions are extremely conservative, with a few exceptions. The difficulty I have is understanding how these opinions derive from or even relate to Orthodoxy. When I read St. Isaac of Syria or the Sermon on the Mount I have to say that George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and the Cato Institute don’t exactly spring to mind.
To be honest, John Kerry doesn’t spring to mind either. But at least I can understand how someone might read “blessed are the peacemakers” and end up opposing a war. I can understand how someone might read ” . . . the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself” and not be in favor of deporting all illegal immigrants at gunpoint. I can understand how someone could read about the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt and not be in favor of sealing the borders. In can understand how someone might read “blessed are the poor,” and “But woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation,” and “Hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith . . . But ye have despised the poor” and conclude that the Christian tradition comes down on the side of the poor.
I’m not saying that the liberal position is the “christian” position. And it may be that the liberal point of view is shot full of error and excess. It may be that certain aspects of it are overtly evil. But at least I can discern some kind of relationship between liberalism and the gospel.
From a religious point of view, the problem that I have with many of the more conservative comments here is that I just don’t see the connection to the gospel, nor is that connection made as part of the argument. To be honest, if you take out the racism and anti-semitism of the John Birch Society, and substitute “liberals” for “communists,” many of the conservative comments here reflect little more than a warmed-over version of the John Birch Society. Instead of godless, elitist, intellectual communists assaulting America you have godless, elitist, intellectual liberals assaulting America. Instead of communists undermining America through homosexuality, pornography, and abortion you have liberals undermining America through homosexuality, pornography, and abortion. Instead of traitorous communists weakening the country you have traitorous liberals undermining the country.
Now if all this updated John Birch Society stuff has something to do with Christianity and Orthodoxy I would be happy to hear what that is.
Note 48 Accountibility for Consequences
Jim Holman assumes that one can lightly skip from Scripture to intelligent policy to be enacted into law in our democracy.
In contrast, I assert that it is not sufficient to cloak one’s position with a concern for the poor and thereby end all discussion. Government policies need to be evaluated by taking into consideration their advantages and disadvantages, their benefits and costs and their long-term consequences.
I ask you this…..
Which is better a policy which intelligently helps Mexico clean up its corrupt government and which promotes Mexican economic development, so that Mexicans can live decent lives in their own country …..
OR…… a policy which undermines the rule of law in America, which condones tax evasion hurting honest taxpayers, which condones flaunting minimum wage requirements hurting the honest employers which honor minimum wage, which overwhelms public emergency care facilities causing emergency room in Los Angeles to shut down thereby reducing medical care for everyone in the area, which creates a black market for labor which empowers unscrupulous employers who are free from laws protecting labor…
While a Christian may encounter a law which he is morally bound to break, shouldn’t a Christian think long and hard before breaking the law or encouraging others to break a law? May a Christian disregard any law as an inconsequential thing? May a Christian dismiss the value of the rule of law? If Christians encourage the disregard of the rule of law, what defense does society have against anarchy? Against the rule of the mob? Against the rule of a tyrant?
Are the laws of a nation, which attempt to control its borders, per se unChristian?
Is it unChristian to stop the spread of human disease from one country to another? Is it unChristian to stop the spread of plant disease from one country to another?
Is it unChristian to stop the spread of animal disease from one country to another?
Is it unChristian to arrest a criminal who may be fleeing from the law of one country into another country?
Easy answers not allowed if the poster wishes to maintain standing as a serious contributor to national debates on the nature and scope of immigration policy.
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Which is better a policy which promotes the maximum productivity for individual workers and which gives assistance to those who, despite their best efforts, cannot benefit from job training..a very small group consisting of the mentally incompetent ……………
OR …..a policy which imposes a high minimum wage, which causes overall employment to contract, which makes internships prohibitively expensive for training young workers, or which causes prices to rise hurting the poor the most or which causes capital and the jobs it creates to leave the industry or jurisdiction.
Jim Holman seems to want to revert to reasonsing such as….. employees are “the poor” of Scripture…. employers are the “evil rich”….. laws should force redistribution from the “evil rich” to “the poor.” We have had long discussions in which is has been demonstrated that while minimum wage protections have their place, their overuse can boomerange and HURT THE POOR. Actions have consequences whether we want to think about them or not.
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Missourian writes: “Jim Holman assumes that one can lightly skip from Scripture to intelligent policy to be enacted into law in our democracy.
In contrast, I assert that it is not sufficient to cloak one’s position with a concern for the poor and thereby end all discussion. Government policies need to be evaluated by taking into consideration their advantages and disadvantages, their benefits and costs and their long-term consequences.”
I would say that my position is that one at least has to grapple with the tradition on these issues, and that one’s views should be actively informed by the tradition. How that plays out in terms of individual actions and beliefs is an open question as far as I’m concerned.
As you indicate there are many reasons why strict control of the borders is important to a government; you note the importance of the rule of law and many other problems that would result from uncontrolled immigration. I’m not sure to what extent that is ultimately authoritative for Christians. Christians throughout history have engaged in various illegal activities including refusing military service, helping slaves escape, hiding refugees, and so on.
I’m not saying that there’s an easy answer to any of these issues. I’m saying that the tradition has to be brought to bear on these issues, and that in many cases the tradition seems to be absent from many of the conservative opinions that I see here. As you say, one can’t just say “the Bible says this,” and then it’s Miller Time. On the other hand at some point one has to consider what the Bible does say, and the resulting view should reflect that. If it turns out that the Bible is rarely seen as contradicting anything in right-wing politics, that seems strange to me.