Posted on 05/02/2003 10:42:07 PM PDT by Jewels1091
WASHINGTON, May 2 (UPI) -- For the nine Democratic presidential candidates, watching President George W. Bush fly onto the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln in his jet pilot suit, and hugging all those certified war heroes, must have been like the Iraqi command when the bombs of "shock and awe" began to redraw the map of downtown Baghdad.
There before them is what they face next year: a 56-year-old man, tanned and fit, able to take a hard carrier hook landing without using the barf bag; in the words of one of the pilots, a "stud;" declaring victory on the decks of a sunlit aircraft carrier at sea with thousands of young American servicemen roaring their applause.
Ronald Reagan's Hollywood team could not have done better. This is a war president! He has defeated the Taliban, removed Saddam Hussein, bluffed back the Russians, Chinese and French and now warns the world that if you challenge the United States, one of these giant carriers with more warplanes than most countries can dream of will roll up next to your border and change your regime.
This is a sitting president who is going to challenge everything the tentative, politically correct 1990s stood for. He is running on a return of the America to the 1950s, the glory days: big cars, cheap gas, a powerful military whose generals are proconsuls from Baghdad to Kabul, and family values.
Even though he sat out Vietnam flying in the Texas Air National Guard, he has marshaled the giant constituency of the U.S. military, tapping the patriotism that burned after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and catering to the conservative values of the regular forces.
His campaign, like a fast-moving armored column in the desert, will be a hard target to hit. To attack his war is to attack the young men and women who fought the war and won it. The cheers on the deck of the Abe Lincoln were genuine and the Democrats who watched it know that.
Even if no weapons of mass destruction are found in Iraq or real connections to al-Qaida established, the hated Saddam regime is gone and there are enough welcoming and happy people in Iraq to certify this little war. Bush Thursday was careful not to link the war to the first Gulf War, the one so many people think his father didn't finish. He linked it to the war on terror. This allows him to roll forward like that armored column, glossing over the future of Iraq, glossing over all the tangled issues of whether it can be governed or even reconstructed.
By declaring Iraq but a battle in the war on terror that is still under way, Bush neutralizes a Democratic complaint that his wars are no guarantor of safety from terrorist attack. The war, he says endlessly, could be endless, and an endless war faces no accounting. It is always a work in progress.
Presidents always have the advantage of an incumbent, but nothing matches the U.S. armed forces for drama and color. The nine Democrats conduct their first debate Saturday evening at 9 p.m. EDT in South Carolina. They were unable to persuade any national channel to carry the debate live, and ABC finally agreed to tape it. The first national TV broadcast of it will air at 1:30 a.m.
Bush was able to produce the sound stage of a giant carrier and its 5,000 young Americans as a backdrop for what perhaps was his first campaign speech. Millions of people worldwide watched him land on the carrier deck.
It is a theme Americans will see again and again in the next months. This is the president of the war on terror. The Republican Party will hold its convention in New York in early September, literally a stone's throw from Ground Zero. The heroes of that day, the police and firemen, will be there. The heroes of the war in Afghanistan will be there and the heroes of the Battle of Iraq.
Though politics in a republic is an uncertain practice, right now, George W. Bush must look very formidable.
What a bunch of bull. The DNC doesn't want the "National" channels to cover the debate because it would show the RATs eating their own - plain and simple. Afterall, if someone has a debate, and there is no one around to see it, did it actual occur? (meaning, you can't hold the participants accountable for their LEFT leaning views during primary season to secure the nomination, when it comes time to move to the center and face off against "W".
If a President made an address and said, "The war on terror is not over, yet it is not endless," it would have been considered quite strange for a newspaper columnist to write the next day, "The war, he says endlessly, could be endless." In the past that would have been considered false reporting, literally claiming the opposite of something that millions of people saw and heard as it happened. Today this is no longer odd. It is a characteristic of liberal newspaper columnists that they state things that are not so, as part of developing their argument... even when they must be aware that tens of millions of people will instantly recognize that they are not telling the truth. They don't care. They are writing the "first draft of history," and history will eventually become whatever they say it is. In a similar vein, liberals will forever be writing, "Even if no weapons of mass destruction are found in Iraq or real connections to al-Qaida established..." in the same way that they previously stated that "Bush has simply not made the case." It is a mantra, a phrase endlessly repeated according to the Gospel of Goebbels. Have we found documents in Iraq proving that the government of Saddam Hussein invited one of bin Laden's lieutenants to Baghdad, and hosted him for two weeks in a series of meetings? Well, yes, but so what? We can still say that no real connections to al Qa'ida have been established, because we're liberals and we can just lie. The snippy little references like "sitting out Vietnam flying in the Texas Air National Guard" and endless repetitions of the phrase "his war" are part of the genre. We expect little slings and arrows to be hurled at the columnist's political opponents. That's fair, but next time, could we please stick to the facts? |
ROTFLMAO! Love it!
Yeah, I'm tired of everyone saying Clinton never had his chance. The Cole was attacked by Al Qaida, the World Trade Center was attacked in 1993 by Al Qaida, and Oklahoma City was attacked by Iraq it looks like. The Dems knew that Iraq was in on Oklahoma City but Clinton's hatred of conservatives caused him to blame it on Rush Limbaugh and hide the fact that Iraq had connections. All three of these incidents are justification for a major war on terror but we had a Commander in Chief in Bill Clinton that would rather play his little political games and not do the right thing and take a chance on a major war.
Exactly. And don't forget Winston Churchill. He was booted out right after winning WW2 for an incompetent liberal. We can't take anything for granted. War heros are soon forgotten in elections.
3" wide by 36" long. It comes in 1000 foot rolls so 2 rolls will take care of all of them.
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There was a time when opinion pieces were held to a higher standard than this. They had to be more than just the random musings of a partisan mind. The best of them developed a logical argument, and it was against the rules to employ errors of fact to support the case.