PING!
Posted on 08/17/2006 5:31:26 AM PDT by GMMAC
Warrior legacy
Calgary Sun
Thu, August 17, 2006
By PAUL JACKSON
PHOENIX-- On wings high above the Arizona landscape, I'm reading my latest mailing from the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars and pondering what would have befallen the western democracies had not the 28th president decided to make the U.S. into a world power on the international stage.
Although Wilson was a Democrat -- and on the domestic front a social reformer in the league of fellow Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt -- he pushed America into the First World War.
It was then game over for Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany. There's much talk currently -- horrifying to the mish-mash of oddities who call themselves Democrats today -- that President George W. Bush follows a Wilsonian policy in international affairs.
Well, it's true -- the 43rd president is very much of the linage of Wilson and so, indeed, was Roosevelt. FDR battled isolationist forces to bring the U.S. into the Second World War, aided fortunately by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. But for the U.S. entry, Adolf Hitler would have won that conflict with nightmarish results.
President Harry Truman, who followed Roosevelt, not only had the guts to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but also then went on to contain Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's treacherous plan to expand his evil empire all across Western Europe.
One really has to wonder how Democrats Wilson, Roosevelt and Truman would regard the weak-kneed Democratic party today, a party of appeasement. Well, all three would probably be Republicans and cheering Bush along.
Truman also called a halt to Communist aggression in Korea, backed by both Canada and Britain. But for South Korea being Democratic today, that maniac Kim Jong-Il, who boasts about his nuclear arsenal, would be running a nation twice the size he does now.
Truman was followed by Republican Dwight Eisenhower, a politician-warrior, who largely carried on the Truman doctrine of keeping Stalin and his henchmen at bay.
We then come to President John F. Kennedy, largely responsible for getting the U.S. into Vietnam in a big way. Again a Democrat with blood in his veins, Kennedy's plan was to prevent Southeast Asia falling to the Communists. Not daring to use the atomic bomb -- one single bomb would have done it -- and battled increasingly by Lib-Left news media, the U.S. became bogged down in Vietnam with disastrous results.
Republican contender Barry Goldwater had planned to campaign on turning North Vietnam into one big parking lot, and might well have won the 1964 presidential election had not Kennedy been assassinated in 1963. With that, Lyndon Johnson, a right-wing Democrat, became president, and had the entire mess of Vietnam tossed into his lap. Not knowing which way to turn in a divided party and country and exhausted, he backed out of running for a second term. That was a tragedy, since Johnson was a master politician.
But it brought the much-maligned Richard Nixon on the scene, who saw with clear eyes the nation was tired of the Vietnam debacle, and so pretty much surrendered to the Communists. It's ironic -- and that much misused word is correct in this case -- how a man who built his reputation on battling Communism threw in his gloves in this instance.
After Nixon, we have the short-lived presidency of Gerald Ford, who foolishly declared the Polish people, staggering under the Soviet heel, did not regard themselves as a "captive people."
With that, every Polish and other Eastern European vote in the next election in 1977 went to the feeble-minded but egotistical Jimmy Carter.
Carter stumbled around almost from Day One, so it was relatively easy for Republican Ronald Reagan to knock off the Democratic incumbent just four years later.
We now know just what a historical juggernaut that became, because Reagan, together with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul, then went on to destroy the Soviet empire and free hundreds of millions of enslaved people.
In Bush's steadfast foreign policy are all kinds of nuances -- or stamps -- of the warrior presidents from Wilson on.
One day, Bush, too, will be seen as a hero for battling world terrorism.
His detractors will be scorned for their cowardice.
PING!
bttt
Depends on who writes the history books. Sigh.
"....... One day, Bush, too, will be seen as a hero for battling world terrorism.
His detractors will be scorned for their cowardice."
I realize the MSM down here has been trumpeting a giant loss for the entire Republican/Conservative political world in the coming elections, but with their record over the last dozen years, I wonder if that "one day" might just be November 7, 2006.
Personally, if I see a "D" behind the name of an unopposed candidate for dogcatcher, I'll write in the name of my grandson's new puppy.
I will never vote for a democrat. Until they rid themselves of the anti-Amercanism, they are a dangerous party.
Here in Virginia, they don't have to declare party on the ballot, so you have to check with the campaign workers outside to know. After the local Democrats removed the Bush signs I'd put up, replacing them with Kerry signs in the SAME HOLES, I'll never vote for a Democrat for dogcatcher either, and I do check.
So it may be with President GW Bush. If his gamble pays off and the Middle East is transformed, his critics will have to eat some crow, too. The big difference now is the Internet. When a Crissy Matthews tries to revise history the bloggers will smack him down like they did Dan Rather.
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conservatives literally kicked the crap out of the left in cyberspace.
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That just has such a nice ring to it!
"and it's funny 'cause it's true"
Nixon won the Vietnam war. Commies in congress hated him so much they threw it away. Then they peddled this pack of lies about how the American people were against the war all along and nobody could defeat guerillas and all the rest of it. They ran their peacenik and Nixon mopped the floor with him. The Dems split on the war in 1968 and were dead set against it by 1972, but as a direct result the country told the Dems to take a flying leap. They pretend the internal thoughts of the left were the country - they weren't. In 1972, North Vietnam attacked across the border with massed armor thinking they could take the place because US ground forces had left. US airpower hadn't, and along with the ARVN stopped them cold. ARVN was derided by the left but they were the last to give up, and when backed by us the way NVN was backed by the Russians, they held just fine.
Before the 1976 presidential elections I remember a history lecturer I had at University, who happened to be an American, predicting that if Jimmy Carter were elected he would make some big mistakes. Seems like this lecturer got it right. Apparently Lincoln, like Bush, had lots of detractors. History has been much kinder. I cannot help but suspect that there might not have been a 9/11 if Bush had been in office from 1993 until 2001 instead of Clinton.
ping
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