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
Amen
Hey! Let's not disparage old hippies! There are hundreds of us on FR.
Very good point!!!!!!!!!!! (a hundred more !!)
Wow. Your post deserves its own thread. Thank you for your service, and thank you for speaking up.
That, in a nutshell, nails it. And too many Freepers are all too willing to be manipulated.
;-)
:) We think alike and what amazes me is that some on here think that if OBL doesn’t come out and make a video tape to show Odumbo lied that means he is dead.
How ludicrous is that? If you have been hunted for years and had to spend your life hiding, and someone announced to the world that you have been killed and that you now sleep with the fishes, would the first thing you did be to announce that you weren’t dead so they would continue to hunt you down? Logic always rules.
One of the issues I have, and this is personal, that I did not in any way feel joyous.
I can’t.
I take satisfaction that OBL is dead, but this whole business, from beginning to end, is not something I can bring myself to whoop at. It just isn’t me.
This is grim. Not to say I haven’t found certain grains of humor during this time, but when I found out, all I could muster was: “Good. That’s done.” Was it a “Good thing”? Without any doubt whatsoever. Would I have felt like singing if I were in a crowd? I doubt it.
I have thought a lot about this over the last few days. As a Christian, I struggle with the concept of forgiveness. Many times over the last decade, I have thought to myself: “If presented with the situation, could I forgive someone like Bin Laden for what he has done? Could I do that?”
The obvious answer (to me, at least) is, that forgiveness is not mine to give. But even putting that aside, lest anyone think I have gone soft, I don’t think that it is impossible to forgive someone, but fully expect they bear responsibility and pay in full for their actions, up to and including the forfeit of their life. I am a unshakable supporter of the Death Penalty.
But I know the Bin Laden is now facing his maker, and it isn’t the one that dangles the 72 virgins in front of him.
And that fills me with a grim satisfaction.
I did not comment on this event yesterday because I did not know what to say.
I was so proud of our seals and so thankful none of them were killed. I was so disgusted with Obama and media taking credit when I expect the CIC to be classy and honorable and give credit to the soldiers who actually risk their lives to carry out our dirty work.
I have to hesitate to say what I just said because I wanted to say the soldiers “who protect our freedom.” I can’t say they “protect our freedom” anymore because we have lost so much freedom and even while they are sacrificing their lives. Petraous thinks he is in a country under Shira - denouncing free speech and blaming politically incorrect speech for the state of the never ending murderous snit of the Muslim “street.” There is a reason we are at war with Islam and it’s not free speech.
I am thankful to our soldiers and worry about them because our military and civilian leadership have become politically correct to the point where playing around with Muslim sensibilities has over-ridden protecting the lives of our soldiers, our lives in the country and our constitution. I will never get over the brass letting that known jihadist counselor Hason mentally torment and then murder our soldiers at Fort Hood. I wonder how many they are killing with the same betrayal on the battle field that we don’t know about while no one is watching and reporting. I know the rate of the body count is rising. It reminds me of what my brother told me about Viet Nam.
I wanted to feel and express pride in our country yesterday but I could not. So I did not say anything.
I am guilty of the FR/DU comparison as well. I haven’t looked at that site in years. Thanks for taking the bullet for me. I’ll stop the comparison talk.
Hey, I love old hippies who wised up. There ain’t any of those on DU!
Outstanding post. Many here should listen carefully to what you say.
when it was the SEALS who killed UBL under GWB’s policies that The Won ran against!!Furthermore, Peter King says the *water-boarding* is the reason we got the information in 2007 which led to UBL’s location!
__________________________
AMEN!!
The supposition that Osama's death might not be real, due to the fact that Obama is the one giving you the news. It's totally stupid arrogant and wrong for the Obama administration to not real dead Obama photos yet, but doubting this event is not 'healthy skepticism' it's nutty. And PS, Obama is eligible. That's a dead end.
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 love you too! Some great comments on this thread. And he also ramrodded fags into the military and messed up the ROE getting OUR GUYS KILLED!
That was an excellent post. Excellent! :)
There are some GREAT comments on this thread. NFHale - a couple headlines today said NO BUMP in the polls for the Zero! I don’t think this will help him at all. :-)
Monica Crowley said on the radio Sunday, paraphrasing, "The brouhaha about the BC and skepticism of Obama in general is that he comes across as not anti-American, but un-American." So people doubt, . . a Trust but Verify Reagan attitude. It's a shame, but everything is suspect from this CIC because of his background and how he comes across.
That's funny, I read right over that without blinking an eye. It's so confusing Osama Obama Obama Osama.
You're sure it wasn't a Freudian slip?
I’ve read that “Obama” is the name “Osama” in Swahili or whatever the language is in Kenya, probably a number of tribal dialects.
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