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
AS much as I “strongly dislike” the POTUS, I actually don’t begrudge him this victory, because we’ve waited so long and wanted it so badly.
HOWEVER,
because he is a known LIAR and everything he says and does is OPAQUE despite his promises of transparency, shrouded in mystery, plotted and planned based on potential political fallout, scripted and teleprompted, retracted and revisited, etc., I’m having a hard time feeling all “warm and fuzzy.”
Something just feels “off.”
Bump and a hat tip. As I work my way through this thread, your post is the one I most agree with of those I’ve read to this point. I predict The One will let the “deather” conspiracies spin out of control, mostly unanswered. To date, there’s nothing I’ve seen that’s more likely to get him re-elected. He’s riding at least a bit of a bump in public support for having followed GWB’s groundwork, and for allowing the Navy Seal’s to kill OBL. If, at the same time, he can hang “deathers” around the neck of the 2012 GOP field, with the reliable assistance of the MSM, it could carry him all the way.
I’ve been called an “Obot” for daring to point out there is enough evidence to say Obama was born in Hawaii.
When you have that kind of mindset, basically trashing people not for being non-conservative, but for coming to a different factual conclusion, reasonable and rational discussion goes out the window.
The folks who are doubting even the latest birth certificate release are almost a self-parody now. This is not conservative news, its fringe conspiracy bunk. The left just loves to have those guys around as a punching bag.
Good luck.
You are Right and right. Don’t leave.
He’s a troll.
Huck, I’m not sure exactly what bothered you about yesterday’s comments on the forum, but I can tell you that there was something gnawing away at me about how this all took place.
I was thrilled to hear that Obama was dead. I was proud of our military players who went in and did the deed. Wow, what a great accomplishment. This was a slick operation. Kudos to those men. I couldn’t be more proud.
Then you have a sophomoric individual appear on the television boasting about what his first military priority was, as if that wasn’t the first military priority of his predecessor. If that didn’t do it for you, perhaps the fact that they knew where Osama Bin Laden was from August 2010 and didn’t hit him until now, might.
One can only wonder, what the hell? What were they waiting for, Laden to move so they could claim they almost had him again?
When Bush was president Obama didn’t like the war effort in Iraq. He didn’t like Guantanamo Bay open. He didn’t want us to remain in Afghanistan. Hell, he didn’t like any of what Bush was doing. And yet, having troops in the region, having Guantanamo open made finding Laden possible. It made carrying out the operation to end him possible. So does Obama give any credit to Bush? No. Instead he lists his actions that took down Laden.
I had not even heard of the death for more than twelve hours, and the info was leaked that Laden was buried according to Islamic law. We can’t even find the bits and pieces to bury some of our 09/11 victims, and yet we can clean and wash and wrap a twisted leader of a global network of terrorists ‘out of what, respect’?
We are assured that the DNA proves within 99.9% that it was Osama Ben Laden, however we are told over and over again that to do a good DNA match it takes weeks. Here they supposedly did it in a few hours.
There’s almost no negative reaction from the region. Some Middle-Eastern nations actually made positive comments. And then a U. S. journalist was shown on television interviewing Pakistanis on the street no more than a block away from the compound where Laden was killed.
Tell me this isn’t bazaaro world stuff here.
It’s almost as if we collectively had the same detached from reality dream here, and none of it is connected to reality.
Perhaps that’s why folks are unsettled. Perhaps that’s why they are acting somewhat differently than you would expect, and yet you can’t put your finger on it.
Tell me what part of this has played out as you expect it to in your minds eye. Tell me you thought Middle-Eastern nations would make neutral to good comments. Tell me you thought our team would basically anoint the guy and give him a military funeral at sea. Tell me you thought they would find out where he was and wait eight months to do the deed.
Tell me you thought you’d see Obama, Hillary Clinton, and their dregs of humanity sitting in a room chewing their fingernails while our military did anything.
I’ve been very careful to thank our troops on the ground. Beyond that, color me scratching my head and wondering what the hell is going on here?
Huck, I see no problem with agreeing with the end result while vigorously disputing the cause, effect and credit for a result.
I bear in mind the quote attributed to Ronald Reagan: “There is no limit to what you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the credit.”
True, but when that same credit is going to be turned into political munitions the way the Japanese made weapons with our iron exports to them prior to WWII, I am not inclined to give leeway to them.
And that ridiculous, self-aggrandizing speech the other night left no doubt what it means to him and other liberals.
I don’t care to be impaled on the sword of credit that I extend to them, which is in this case, very minimal.
The analogy would be a man who decided to build a unique kind of engine with a concept that is more efficient and powerful than anything ever conceived.
For years, he would be derided as a crackpot and idiot by his neighbor who would call the police anytime his garage lights were on late at night or if he was hammering a piece of metal.
This guy writes letters to the editor of the local newspaper (who is incidentally one of his best friends) puts up flyers around the neighborhood, agitates other neighbors to protest in front of the guy’s house, and complains at the town hall meetings each month in an effort to get the guy to shut down.
The guy trying to build the engine goes bankrupt from all the legal battles, has to put all his belongings up on the auction block, then gets sick and dies due to the stress.
The neighbor buys the house and all it contains, takes the engine and changes history with it. Not once does he ever mention his neighbor who conceived, designed and built the engine, and is the subject of flattering stories in the newspapers and publications owned by his friend, talking about how he knew all along this engine would change the way engines work.
This doesn’t change the fact that the engine is by far the best thing ever to have churned out horsepower.
It also doesn’t change the fact that the SOB who killed the other guy off is a low-life SOB.
So, no.
Not one ounce of credit. Not one inch of credit to the Left.
I will not forget the past 10 years. Never.
Liberals did everything in their power to obstruct the prosecution of the war, to handicap and demonize our troops, to defund their operations, to cut budgets on intelligence, and where they didn’t cut it, to effectively hamstring it.
The Left took the side of the terrorists every chance they got. Liberals did their best to scream in one ear of our troops in the field and down in Gitmo while they tried to do their jobs, making it difficult and attempting to demoralize them. They tried to force civilian trials and grant the rights of citizenship to these scumbags who were responsible or complicit by ideology in the gruesome deaths of thousands of innocent Americans.
I WILL NOT FORGET WHAT THEY HAVE DONE. Never
I give all the credit to the US military and those intelligence agencies that have been able to continue functioning in spite of the left. In their success I thank them and
But I will NEVER give any credit to the Left in this. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER.
LOL!! Now that post is bizarre. You like Beckwith but hate birthers. I’m a little confused. Explain this one.
I am sure you agree, combat operations are quick, violent and confusing. Figuring out what happened, when and how and in what sequence, is not easy. In fact, to do so within hours is downright impossible. Combat veterans here on FR will agree.
The briefer should respond to questions with: “At this time, we understand. . . “ or “Initial reports are. . .” The fact that they do not include those qualifiers indicates they are incompetent, not liars.
It became really hard to "enjoy" the moment.
I don’t plan on leaving. I might not post as much as in the past. I’m busier these days, and I’m a little alienated. But I like to get my news here. I was just saying that if for some reason I got zotted for this post, I was OK with that. But I didn’t really think that would happen. I thought I was on pretty solid ground and that I was respectful and fair. Obviously it’s an active post, so maybe it served a good purpose. I took a night to sleep on it before posting.
Huck isn’t an old timer. He just made a FR account long ago. Check past posting history. A few dozen posts over 11 years?
I agree with your sentiments, Huck. But with the lowered expectations one brings to Free Republic these days it is easy just to ignore the posters of whom you speak.
Sorry about that. It WAS unintentional.
I just came upon your post. I haven’t had time to read all the comments, and I won’t have time. So this may be repetitious. but fwiw.
I noticed a few things missing form your post.
You didn’t mention that Obama gave himself 99 percent of the credit, the military 1 percent, and Bush none. You evidently want us to be blind to this childish, narcissistic marxist’s co-opting of the raid, and act as if he didn’t slight the very men who risked their lives to make it happen.
No mention of the degree to which Obama opposed every resource that made Osama’s demise possible. No mention of the hateful degree to which Obama would have undermined our national security with his Post-American vision, if we’d taken his advice (during the Bush years) on Gitmo, enhanced interrogation, etc.
No mention of the fact that Obama has spent the last three+ years demonizing Bush and blaming him for EVERYTHING, and yet couldn’t muster the modicum of human decency to thank Bush for his role in this major success.
You want us to forget just weeks ago, when Obama used the SEALS as bargaining chips in the budget battle, and promised to withhold their pay if he didn’t get everything his way.
You want us to pretend Obama isn’t rabidly anti-military, and you don’t want us to see the Planet Jupiter sized hypocrisy in undercutting the military at every turn, and then crowing like the king of the world as if THEIR bravery, skill and success was his and his alone.
No mention of the toxic poison Obama has been injecting into the national dialogue since even prior to the election, when he treats conservatives as less than second class citizens, and mocks us, lies about us and revels in governing against us. In your rose-colored world, all that viciousness just disappears, so we can applaud the man [it’s his idea, after all, that this is HIS victory, not the SEALS] who disdains us.
No mention of the fact that Obama has given more than half the constituency the middle finger since the election. A president should be for the whole country, but this one gloats in using his power to punish conservatives. But in your unicorns and skittles world, we should ignore the fact that he’s elbowing the SEALS out of the way, so he can politicize and capitalize on their victory.
I could go on, but you get the picture. You’ve got a steaming truckful of blame for FReeper, but not a teaspoonful for the man who has purposefully divided the country to a nearly unprecedented degree, and who seeks to benefit politically not only from this military operation but from the very deep schisms he has worked so hard to create.
Iow, you couldn’t spare even one sentence to place even one percent of the blame at Obama’s door. No, it’s all FR’s fault.
Screw that.
I have been reading and answering Huck’s posts for the last 10 years, dude.
I am quite sure that someone has said this. However, the tone of FR has devolved naturally, not because of immaturity, but because of the breath taking brazen lack of respect and utter contempt of the American citizen, our rights, our Foundational philosophy, and our exceptional (read:the USA being the EXCEPTION, not the rule of World History)history by this administration. I am quite sure EVERY “freedom loving” (of which I beleive may be a scant few in the BHO administration)rejoiced (with reservation, keep in mind who resides in the WH)upon hearing the news of OBL KIA. What must be kept in mind is that this same administration (through directives in the DOJ)was attempting to put in place criminal trials against the same people (CIA et al) who information they used to ultimately find OBL. So forgive our cynicism, but blatant hypocritical actions as we witnessed yesterday (BHO announcement Sunday night, again, contained 24 personal possesive pronouns and 3 references to the brave men and women of the US Military), and that we are becoming accustomed to, ought to be the focus of our ire. There comes a time when irreverency and anger MUST champion the discorse. When those in power patronize and take full credit for something that was beautifully successful, when at first they wanted to destroy the very system that caused its success...that would be one of those times.
outpostinmass alerted a mod that I am a DU troll.
It’s amazing how FR is infested with trolls as never before and none are getting booted out the door.
>>Why volunteer for an infection?<<
This link is for you.
http://allegianceanddutybetrayed.blogspot.com/2008/12/stranger.html
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