Posted on 08/08/2008 6:19:05 AM PDT by PlainOleAmerican
That which is old, is new again…
“On January 31, 1971, members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) met in a Detroit hotel to discuss war crimes they claimed to have participated in or witnessed during their combat tours in Vietnam. During the next three days, more than 100 Vietnam veterans and 16 civilians gave anguished, emotional testimony describing hundreds of atrocities against innocent civilians in South Vietnam, including rape, arson, torture, murder, and the shelling or napalming of entire villages. The witnesses stated that these acts were being committed casually and routinely, under orders, as a matter of policy.”
(snip)
They’re Back!
The modern Winter Soldier movement now operates as the Iraq Veterans Against the War.
Similar to the Vietnam era Winter Soldier anti-war movement, the modern effort uses the alleged testimony of carefully cherry-picked soldiers who claim to have witnessed systemic American atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan to make their ten point case against the war.
The organization lists the following ten primary reasons why they oppose today’s war on terror, specifically taking place in Iraq and Afghanistan.
(snip)
The problem with this list is that almost every reason is based upon lies, half-truths or complete propaganda.
(Excerpt) Read more at newmediajournal.us ...
Actor Jon Voight also wrote a strong op-ed in the Washington Times on this very subject, making the proper connections between the anti-war movement and the extreme left.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jul/28/voight/
Hardened anti-American socialists are not concerned with facts or reality, only their agenda. But the rest of America should read both of these columns!
They were creeps back when I was in school. They’re still creeps now.
Those 10 points sound like the Democrat party talking points.
Jon Voight makes sense.
Don’t worry, you won’t run into any of them while volunteering to serve the troops or their families anywhere...
They call themselves the “real patriots.”
Yet they do not love, support or defend this country or the troops who do...
that’s a biggie:
“illegal war”!
how many 100,000,000’s of people are dead due to “illegal wars”?
maybe a legal war would make these people undead!
They are the DNC talking points...
Both Winter Soldier and the DNC adopted these talking points from The Democratic Socialists of America.
Yep!
Not to communists, he doesn’t...
You simply won't find many ex soldiers today that will play this game because simply put they are all volunteers and the public won't listen to those cry’s; and because they are far less apt to behave this way in the first place. The number of those who will throw medals into ponds or think some other bad behavior will increase their chances of scoring with some hippy chick is far less.
You will always find a few, and even today there are deserters which the media focuses all their attention on. But when you look at the raw numbers it's near awesome how few they really are. It is MHO that if we had a conscripted Army today, the camels back would have broken several years ago! It would have added more fuel to those trying to victimize the soldier in an anti-war effort. You would have a harder time justifying the casualties and soldiers deployed. You'd have names like Kerry, Kennedy, Pelosi, Murtha, Schummer, Reid, Rangle and Obama beating their drums even louder, surrounding themselves with lots of willing and able loud mouths willing to scream the anti-war rhetoric they are told to parrot creating “their” self fulfilling prophesy of failure in Iraq.
Today, it's the kid that volunteered in order to get a free education, thinking he would never see active duty, which has replaced the reluctant draftee of old.
And isn't it interesting that when the draft was in effect, it was the left who cried foul over drafting young men into service, and now, it is the left crying that they want a draft so that it isn't just poor black kids seeking a free education who volunteer...
Rangle has been pushing for a draft for years now...But he was against the draft when it was in effect. Just typical leftist issue jumping.
“a photograph of John Kerry hangs in a room dedicated to the anti-war activists who helped the Vietnamese Communists win the Vietnam War.”
I don’t recall that room, but I’ve been to the War Museum in Saigon and Robert McNamara’s book (”In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam”) is prominently displayed. The communists make sure that everyone sees that the American Secretary of Defense admits that the war was wrong. Makes Kerry look like small potatoes.
I think Rangel believes that what doomed the war in Vietnam was when college deferments were eliminated in 1970 and middle-class college students began to be drafted and sent to Vietnam. He’s hoping for the same result once again.
“He's done very poorly in explaining this war. A prime example: He's never pointed out that we found WMD’s in Iraq.”
It is true that Bush could have and should have used the power of the presidency to rally the American people behind his national security plan. This is a top responsibility for any war time president and Bush did it well in the months immediately following 9/11, but then let the headlines drift off to anti-war propaganda.
But, especially during times of war and continued threat to the homeland, not ALL facts are for public consumption. In spoon feeding Americans, we spoon feed information to the enemy at the same time.
We DID find WMD in Iraq, exactly what we were really looking for, and those facts have been presented by the administration, but now widely reported by the press. You know about it and so do I. I have actually seen stockpiles brought to U.S. nuclear facilities only months after the March ‘03 liberation. They were real... and they were there.
But there are also good reasons why Bush did not over-publicize much of that information, and took the heat instead. This is what a real patriot does... he does what's in the best interest of his country, even if he has to take the heat for doing it.
“he's never defined what victory in Iraq is, how to get there and how we will know we are there.”
He has repeatedly defined victory in Iraq, as if we can't define it for ourselves. We can not leave Iraq until it is stable enough to not require us returning to Iraq months later, with the country in worse condition.
The only people who thought it was going to be a six month in and out operation are those who know nothing about securing freedom for a people who have never known freedom, in a region that does not believe in freedom.
“A country needs clearly defined goals. After Saddam's army was defeated and he was hanged, people couldn't help but wonder why we were still there, getting shot at and blown up. Are we going to stay there until we're not attacked anymore?”
We are going to stay there for many years to come. We still have bases in Germany, Korea, Japan, etc. Iraq will become an ally base of future stability in the region. Combat troops will be withdrawn as soon as the country can provide for its own sovereign security. That day is close now...
“Or until Iraq has a friendly democracy that can defend itself?”
After 232 years, America still has a volatile democracy. Iraq will have a volatile democracy for decades and decades. But it must be stable enough to stand before we leave, or we will lose more soldiers when we are forced to return.
“Meanwhile, Iraq has a $79 billion surplus that it should use to rebuild the country, and we should stop spending US money to do that.”
Yes, part of helping them stabilize their free state includes helping them achieve the financial ability to stand. Do you want us to put them on the permanent foreign aid program instead?
“What happens if the Iraqis elect a bunch of radicals, like Palestine did, or like they did in Iran?”
A possibility more likely in our absence...
“Do we stay and defend that government as well?”
I doubt it...
“That's why the war is so unpopular that it is sinking his presidency.”
There is no such thing as a “popular war.” But the leftist press has made this war more unpopular than need be and the facts on the ground have never mattered to them. Bush has made many of the statements you mention, on many occasions. The press does not report those facts, and on the rare occasion that they do, they usually attack those statements as untrue and politically motivated.
The average American knows no more about any of it that they pick up from 30 second MSM sound-bites, which are NEVER pro-America, based on facts rather than politically motivated rhetoric.
Bush is losing the info war, because the entire MSM in on the other side.
“If Reagan were in charge and had exactly the same results, he'd have 65% approval ratings because he knew how to use the bully pulpit.”
Maybe, but remember that during his time in office, he was called all the same names Bush has been called... a cowboy - a war-monger - an idiot - a dangerous pompous old fool....
Reagan became popular years after office. History will record Bush well too, later.
Don’t know if that picture still hangs today, but it did when I was there some 15 years ago.
Just for the record -
It’s a mistake to think that the military in the post WWII and Vietnam era was comprised of nothing but whining draftees punching their short-timer calendars.
Some branches had more draftees and some had less, depending on the circumstances.
But even when the draft was in effect the solid core of the military was volunteer.
We served with as much pride and professionalism as anyone in any branch of the service does today - we just weren’t paid near as much and the benefits weren’t as juicy.
We volunteered and served because we loved the country and our branch of the service.
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