Posted on 05/03/2011 4:46:53 AM PDT by Huck
Yesterday should have been a glorious day around here. There should have been fireworks and celebration. There should have been somber remembrances. There should have been patriotic tributes. There should have been shared joy at the news that our guys had finally gotten Bin Laden.
Instead, when I visited the site, what I found was a lot of carping. I found people focused more on the political spin than on the great news. I found people transferring their birther mentality onto this event, talking about Obama faking this news, photoshopping information, etc. It wasn't everybody, but it was a LOT of people. It made me sick.
Yesterday Free Republic seemed like DU. It makes me wonder what the hell is going on. Are Freepers getting younger? I always assume that DU is so pathetically immature because they must be younger. Free Republic has always been a place dominated by great class, and wit, and decency. Not this time. What I saw yesterday was a pathetic embarrassment and totally unworthy of this great forum.
As some of you may know, I was in lower Manhattan on 9-11. I was just across the street from the WTC when the first plane hit. I still remember the beautiful clear blue sky that day. I remember walking in between the towers just a minute or so before 8:46am, on my normal route to work. I remember my co-workers screaming in panic when they watched from an office window as the second plane hit the south tower. I remember women crying and screaming hysterically. I remember not being able to contact my wife to tell her I was OK. I remember people jumping to their deaths. I remember seeing the north tower go down with my own eyes, hearing it with my own ears. I remember fleeing Manhattan. I remember it was a Tuesday.
I remember returning to work the following Monday, riding the ferry passed the site, noxious smoke still billowing from the wreckage. I remember armed troops on the sidewalks. I remember wearing a breathing mask inside my building because the foul odor was seeping in through the ventilation system. I remember thinking we'd really gotten kicked in the teeth. They had killed innocent people, they had traumatized our women and children, and I really wanted revenge. I hung a picture on my wall of the American eagle sharpening his talons.
It has been a long time since that day. It's hard to believe how fast time flies. Then again, if you lost your loved one, I imagine time hasn't gone so fast. I love my wife so much, I can empathize with anyone who has lost the one they love. I can't imagine how that would be, and don't want to know, but I can cry for those people because I know what it is like to find your one true love.
I'm not an Obama fan. I hate socialism. But I am so happy that Bin Laden is killed, and that we have exacted some real revenge. It's about time. The politics don't even play into it for me. I still have the little flag, now tattered, that I flew on my car antenna after 9-11. I want to take it out of storage and put it on my car. I want to see American flags on cars like we saw back then. But it's not going to happen, and partially because the normally patriotic conservatives such as the ones here on Free Republic are instead focused on the politics and the fact that a socialist Democrat was president and will get some of the credit.
I guess you all would have been pissed on D-Day too. FDR was as big a socialist as anyone. I guess VE day and VJ day would have chapped your hides, since Truman was a DEM. I don't mean to paint with a broad brush. I know it wasn't every Freeper acting this way. But when I went on the board, that was the general impression, and it was really disappointing. It should have been a great day here. Instead, I saw a lack of patriotism and a lack of class. Free Republic should be better than this. If conservatives lose their patriotism and class, then what will happen to those virtues? I hope we can get them back soon. In the meantime, thanks for reading.
Respectfully,
Huck
There is nothing scarier and if he gets another 4 years, we will see just how horrific this beast and his beast of a wife really are.
Furthermore, Peter King says the *water-boarding* is the reason we got the information in 2007 which led to UBL's location!
Ummmm, well it was long ago, so I can’t recall how many were posted, maybe some were removed and some not...but I distinctly remember the rule of no vanities.
But, it is up to Jim obviously.
What happened to Lt Col Lakin badly shook my confidence in the military leadership. Especially on the heels of what had happened to Able Danger and to the Haditha marines.
I do believe the raid was real, and it bugs me that Obama didn’t take the steps to provide evidence that it was really Osama they got, or to deal with honest questions that people had such as how they could have DNA evidence so soon.
The people actually carrying out the operations deserve much, much better than to have leaders whose credibility is questionable - and especially a CINC who just documentably committed a very public forgery a week ago. That behavior is a national security risk because it means that everything he has his hand in is questionable, and sadly, his hand is involved in military action even if it’s just giving the OK and then taking all the credit, as appears to be the case in this.
I am very, very thankful that the US military brought Bin Laden to justice. I am very, very appreciative of the courage and skill of the people who planned and executed the operation. I can understand why you and others would be upset by those good things being overshadowed. That is exactly the kind of thing so many of us wanted to prevent, by holding both Obama and the military leadership accountable to the truth on a number of things, so they would have their credibility when it was critical for them to be credible.
Your post, #162, is very good. I appreciate it.
Agree 100%
That’s my fault. I thought I had marked the title VANITY as is the custom, but I see that I did not. My apologies.
Outstanding!
Thank you for your exemplary service. And thanks especially for the post; a much needed perspective on this series of events.
Thank you, oh esteemed one :-)
Huck, I agree with you. Freepers are letting their disgust and hatred for Obama get in the way of this story. Sure, Obama is a jerk and wanted to take undue credit for this. Point that out. But at the same time, celebrate UBL’s demise. Party on people!!!
Huck, I think what you were witnessing was the collective frustration of folks who have watched this administration
basically try to dismantle everything we love for the past two years - an admin who will now try to take credit for something that he had nothing to do with, indeed, tried his damnedest to impede, for years prior to being in control.
Here’s the rub - we have been pursuing OBL for ten years now, and all the while listening to the idiots and vile morons on the left denigrate, denounce, and castigate every effort our previous President made in the prosecution of that effort - even while the bodies of our countrymen were not even cold inthe rubble of the Trade Centers, the left started undermining our efforts to exact justice.
And now, we finally get the b*stard, and it’s FuBO in charge when it happens, and we ALL know he’s going to try to take the credit for it, even though he bascially had ZERO to do with it.
We know he saw his chance to improve his poll numbers, and he took it - using the circumstances (”never let a crisis go to waste”) to try to bolster his miserable failure of a presidency.
I personally am glad that the miserable goat humper OBL is dead. I hope the very last thing that went through his head - before the bullet, that is - is one of the SEALs saying “This is from ALL of America, chump”.
I am just disappointed that it happened now, at this point in time, with this ridiculous excuse for a man in the White House trying to take credit for the actions of better men than himself - REAL Americans who throw themselves in harm’s way, every day, because they love the country that raised them and want to protect it from fiends.
To my mind, that’s what went on here yesterday. FuBO went after OBL not because OBL was an enemy of America, but because he saw a chance to get himself re-elected by looking like a big, tough guy. And if its true, that’s just disgusting (I hope to God I’m wrong, but I don’t think I am).
It’s not a lack of Patriotism, good brother; on the contrary, it’s out of love and Patriotism that people recoiled as they did, knowing that this administration, quite possibly THE most Un-American adminstration the country has ever seen, will try to milk this event just to get the fraud re-elected and further erase us as a country, as a people, and as a nation.
THANK YOU DEAR ONYX!
I do not celebrate the deaths of individuals. I celebrate victory. The war on terror continues.
Then there is the usual tiresome, fawning, skewed attempt to placate Muslim sentiments: no photos because that might inflame Muslims; a quick burial at sea "according to Muslim custom" the WH endlessly assured us, because otherwise Muslims might be unhappy.
Of course, Obama and his lickspittles in the MSM will try to give a positive political spin to the event. Any politician would, and this president's popularity is dwindling, so his supporters want to give him a boost. It's irksome, and someone with more class than Obama would let actions speak louder than words. But it will pass. The 2012 election is a long way away.
I see the problem with FR as being exactly the opposite of the problem you see. The way I see it, as our circumstances get more dire, and the threat to our country, our culture, and our way of life increases exponentially, there are a large number of Freepers who want to pretend that it is business as usual, that the politics of today are just like they were in the old days, where Democrat vs. Republican was just chess match between gentlemen and the outcome would not make or break us. Well, we have quite literally come to a moment where the outcome of all the political efforts will either destroy us, or, at best, limp us back toward safe ground. There is no safe status quo anymore. We are up against ideologies that want to destroy this country and everything it stands for and has ever stood for, and adherents to those ideologies are now the majority in our government at all levels.
Amid this perilous environment, one would think that so-called conservative patriots, as we supposedly have here, would recognize the threat and adapt. And we do have quite a few who fit that description. However, we also have Freepers such as yourself who simply cannot adapt to the idea that our government is no longer on our side, if it ever was, that the stakes have been raised, and that greater effort on the part of the enemy calls for greater response on our side. Instead, many Freepers want to continue along the same comfortable path they have traveled their whole lives: bitching about the government but never doing anything about it, watching the lies, deception, illegal behavior, disregard for the rights of the people, disregard for the law at all levels perpetrated by our government entities, and yet refusing to go to the next logical level of thought and accepting that our government is no longer legitimate, cannot be trusted, and must be reset.
In short, there are quite a few Freepers too scared to even consider the possibility of Obama's ineligibility, or the possibility that this Osama thing is just a ploy, or the possibility that Cloward-Piven is being rammed down our throats, or the national treasury purposefully looted, and any number of other crimes against the people of the United States, because that consideration would require them to accept something they desperately do not want to believe, because if they were to believe it, they would have to either act or feel like a coward. They would much rather close their eyes and go back to their comfortable lives watching TV and mowing the lawn.
This is a discussion forum. Ideas are discussed here. Possibilities are discussed here. If you don't like that, if the topics discussed frighten you, then leave.
I love you.
Maybe it's because I don't have television, but I really didn't care much at all about Obama in all this. I didn't see his statement and don't care. He deserves some credit as CiC. Any president would take some political credit from it. I get that. But I'm going to enjoy the news a little more before moving on.
Re #2...Apparently Huck is still there. Which means you’re wrong about more than one thing.
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