Lone voice of Churchill resonates today

I was born in the center of our country in the middle of a war. My father was a war hero; my mother a war widow; a young wife wed shortly after Pearl Harbor who trekked daily to the post office in Mandan, N.D., awaiting the mail from my father, which she read while drinking a chocolate milkshake at the Mandan drugstore.

The drugstore is still there. And they still make chocolate milkshakes. But the conversation at the soda fountain is now about Iraq.

But when Vietnam became more than a whisper of war, I was a journalist, a reporter who got a job because our classmates had been drafted.

I have nothing new to report about that era of conflict and chaos--and I find little connection between the Vietnam War and what's happening now. It is the phosphorescent explosion of World War II I smell.

I covered the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where cops and kids went crazy during an era of bone-cracking, blood-flying, drug-induced, flag-stomping, draft-card-burning civil disobedience ... and disobedience that wasn't so civil.

And when the war was over, I interviewed nine Marine POWs who came home broken and disheartened, one of whom flew over the DMZ and wound up in the Hanoi Hilton with a broken arm, the knowledge his pilot was missing, and U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) as a prison mate.

Before that, I had felt nothing about the war. I had been trained as a journalist to tell both sides and not take sides. So I covered war demonstrations and got pepper gassed in the 1972 riots during the Republican National Convention in Florida and slept with the hippies in Flamingo Park ... and did so as if I were some automaton.

But while having dinner with five young journalists I not only revere, but love--Annie Sweeney, Frank Main, Dave Newbart, Amanda Beeler and Rummana Hussain, who have all been my assistants; who are all so different; who are all so treasured--I became very aware that we may share a recent past, but we do not share the same history.

And as I watched hundreds of protesters suddenly streak past us at our window table at the Rosebud Steakhouse on Walton Street dressed in face paint, carrying anti-war banners, I was reminded of the Vietnam War protests--but only momentarily.

Instead, I am reminded of World War II and the autumn of 1938, when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was hailed as a hero for engineering a deal with Adolf Hitler to bring "peace in our time."

It was about a country that wanted peace at any cost. It was about millions of British voters signing a peace ballot ... and the lone voice of one curmudgeon named Winston Churchill, who fought this policy of appeasing Hitler with all his might.

It was a time when the French urged negotiation and lost their country ... and the League of Nations, which was unable to secure peace.

I'm not equating President Bush with Churchill, but there was a time when one man knew that appeasing a monster was a mistake ... and he took his belief to the mat.

I am older than most of the editorial staff at the Sun-Times. And what separates me from the youngsters protesting in the streets and many journalists who are young enough to be my children ... is history.

And as someone more profound than I once said, "Those that fail to learn from history, are bound to repeat it."

The Axis of Weasels
Germany, France and the anti-American radical Left
By: Jennifer King

The New York Post has dubbed Germany, France and Belgium the “Axis of Weasels”. Lets go one better and substitute Belgium with the Left. Over the past few weeks, we’ve been treated to a a non-ending parade of brainless liberals and celebrities spouting off against President Bush and war with Iraq. “War is so, warlike - you know - and war kills people and small, furry animals.” Yawn. Let’s just dust off that old Sixties slogan, “War is not healthy for children and other living things.” We can hoist up our signs when marching and trying to make ourselves relevant again.

Funny thing about the anti-war crowd though, they seem more anti-Bush than anti-war. Where were they when Clinton was lobbing missiles at aspirin factories, or when he sent our Rangers to Somalia where several of them were killed? Funny, I remember only silence. Also, the usual culprits have been rounded up to participate - People for the (un) American Way, Move On (a Clinton apologist group) and various Communist, socialist, feminist, gay and environmental extremists. In short, the usual gaggle of leftwing radicals.

Their agenda is always the same. It is anti-capitalist, anti-free-market and anti-American. Their radicalism causes them, ironically, to support tyrants and dictatorial thugs worldwide in order to be on the side opposed to the United States. In their twisted, upside down world Hussein, Castro, Mugabe, Milosevic, Khomeini and, before them, Stalin - are the good guys and Bush is Hitler revised.

At heart, they yearn for the destruction of America, for a free and proud America stands in the way of their fantasy of a perfect socialist paradise. A fantasy which has never occurred, despite the killing of millions of dissenters worldwide. A fantasy which CAN never occur, for it disregards the very nature of man.

The liberals and leftists ignore history and experience at their peril. Throughout the 1920s, Germany made a determined effort to rearm despite this action being specifically prohibited by the Versailles Treaty. France and England, wearied by war, did nothing to enforce the Treaty provisions. We all know what followed these years of inaction and appeasement.

Why should Saddam Hussein be any different than Adolf Hitler? He is likewise an evil man, who brutally oppresses and tortures his own citizens. He has long shown a yearning to exert control over the Middle East, proving it further when he invaded Kuwait. Hussein has had twelve long years to improve his weaponry, and he has been completely unimpeded since the impotent Bill Clinton let him kick out the weapons inspectors without effective reprisals.

If Hussein obtains weapons of mass destruction - biological, chemical or nuclear - does anyone seriously doubt that he will use them for attack either upon us or one of his neighbors? Would the Left prefer to keep dithering while Hussein rebuilds, thereby making the possibility that he, or a recruited terrorist, will attack us again?

Will it take a mushroom cloud over Los Angeles to prove the rest of us right? Where will the empty-headed, chattering chablis and caviar crowd be then?

President Bush has thrown down the gauntlet to the United Nations. Surely, resolutions are toothless unless the words are backed by the threat of military action. The terrorists who killed over 3,000 innocent Americans on September 11th brought this war to us. The evil Islamofacists who convince their youth that killing more of us is “God’s Will” need to be eliminated - for they squander not only our youth, but their own future generations. Saddam Hussein, whose evil regime provides money, weapons, training and safe harbor to Islamic terrorists, must be removed from power. The oppressed Iraqi people deserve to be free.

The gutless, radical anti-war crowd are using this pending war to take after a President with whom they personally disagree. Their flimsily veiled hypocrisy is noted all around, with great success. When their film careers begin to falter, because the people they mock will no longer watch them, maybe the lights will begin to go on in their muddled brains. Maybe, then, they can move to Germany or France - and more fully join The Axis Of Weasels.

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