Posted on 12/27/2004 9:04:23 AM PST by CHARLITE
- In his recent unequivocal vote of confidence for Secretary Rumsfeld, President Bush said, among other supportive comments, that Secretary Rumsfeld sometimes presents a rough and gruff demeanor. Sure he does….shouldn‘t he? What demeanor should a Secretary of Defense have, that of a girlie-man? He won two wars for cripes sake and is already on his way to seeing through the exceedingly difficult mission of assuring that elections take place in Iraq at the end of January.
Most of the criticism comes from the political left, all of those military experts, who have the answers to everything. Not a word during Kosovo, but then that’s probably where they gained all their war expertise. Most of them probably even have a war map in their Congressional offices and can tell you exactly how we should conduct this war on terror. You know……we shouldn’t be there in the first place…..it’s a quagmire….we need to bring our kids home as soon as we can….never mind our mission to defeat terrorism.
By the way, I hate that term ‘kids.’ Damn it, they’re men, and if anybody has earned manhood, it’s our MEN in contact with the enemy. They’re not fighting kids, they’re fighting terrorists. It kills me when some pussyfooting politician refers to our soldiers and marines as ‘kids.’ There is nothing more manly than being a player in the combat zone.
Defeating terrorism is a difficult mission, maybe the most difficult in the history of warfare. Simply stated, our strategy is to do it through demonstration that democracy beats theocracy and that establishment of some semblance of a democracy in Iraq is a means of thwarting terrorism within the Middle East and in our homeland as well. If our warlords from the left have a better plan, other than bringing our ‘kids’ back because we shouldn’t be in there in the first place, America would like to hear it. The thing is, they have no plan, no answers….just complaints and criticisms. Firing Secretary Rumsfeld would be a victory for the left, something they haven’t experienced much of lately. And hello….it would be a victory for our enemy as well. They would be shouting , “Allah Akbar’….our sacrifices are succeeding!”
It’s time to call off the sharks. As transgressions go, those by Secretary Rumsfeld’s seem somewhat trivial…his response to a Spec 4 soldier regarding armament for vehicles and discovery that his signature was that of a stamp rather than one that preceded his own personal stuffing of the envelope and dropping it in the Pentagon mailbox. This is the chum bait that has attracted the sharks who are now circling the Pentagon menacingly. Sharks from both sides of the aisle smell blood and are lurking. Hopefully, the commander-in-chief’s support of Secretary Rumsfeld will scatter the scavengers.
But the problem with sharks is when they smell blood they’re not likely to forget the scent nor where it came from. The position of Secretary of Defense is certainly not one in which difficulties will not be encountered, even during times of peace. In times of war, difficulties and Herculean challenges are as commonplace and as abundant as oxygen in the troposphere. Mistakes are inevitable when solving the myriad of problems that accompany managing the super power of the world. These mistakes often become our best lessons as they form our experiences and our lessons learned, and, irrefutably, experience is the ultimate teacher.
Our Secretary of Defense will make mistakes, no mistake about it. It’s how he responds to the mistakes…that is what is important. His mission is to win the war on terrorism, not respond to Spec 4 soldiers with less temerity and personally sign every letter going to grieving parents and loved ones of our lost soldiers. His job is to do everything within his power to keep those letters at an absolute minimum. This is an integral piece of his mission. And he faces it with rough and gruff determination, 7/24/365.
The thing those dumb sharks don’t realize is We all need to learn that We won’t get anywhere in our war against terrorism until We get together.
Robert Lanzotti attended the University of Illinois on a football scholarship from 1955-1960. Through the ROTC program, he was commissioned into the Regular Army as a second lieutenant in 1960 and retired as a lieutenant colonel twenty-five years later. Robert was an Airborne Ranger and a Master Army Aviator. During his two tours in Vietnam he flew more than 1,000 hours of combat helicopter time and was awarded two Distinguished Flying Crosses, four Bronze Stars, and twenty-four Air Medals. He commanded a helicopter unit within the 1st Cavalry Division and served as operations officer of the Army's largest divisional aviation group. Robert served fours years on the Army General Staff at the Pentagon. His formal education includes: University of Illinois, BS, ALS; Hampton University, MA, Ed. Admin.; and Marymount University, ME, Ed. Robert also graduated from the Armed Forces Staff College in Norfolk, VA. Today, Robert is an elementary school teacher in Smyrna, a suburb of Atlanta, where he lives with his wife Vicki and their golden retriever, Rocky.
Comments:lanzotti@therant.us
Every reporter out there in the MSM wants to be the next Woodward & Bernstein, and if they have to get Rumsfield's scalp before they can get Bush's, they figure "So much the better." As always, power and fame trumps patriotism and common sense.
And let's not forget that Rumsfeld not only has won two wars, expeditiously and almost miraculously (coping against Afghan winter, Iraqi summer, desert sandstorms, building-to-building urban warfare, all those quagmires that have caused huge losses to every other modern army in modern times), but he is busy shoveling the clintonoid manure out of the Pentagon stables, with the result that plenty of generals are willing to stab him in the back as they get shoveled out to pasture.
We need this guy for another four years!
Today's MSM has lost all touch with professional journalism, blinded by their leftist-biased politics which is running their business. They have not hit bottom yet, which I hope they do, and many should go out of business so that they get a taste of reality back that might have a hope of cleaning them up.
Only if they can "get" a Republican.
They had more than ample opportunity to demonstrate they were true newshounds with the Clinton administration and the real scandals there (especially re China) but they were as incurious as could be.
True but, they've taken 50% of their potential scalps out of the game by targeting only Republican's. Imagine how many Woodward and Bernstein's there would be if they had really looked into Clintigula and Hitlery during their administration?
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