Posted on 03/23/2003 7:53:00 PM PST by geckogirl
First of all I’d just like to say I’m a 14 year old girl in the 9th grade, just starting high school. I wrote this myself.
I was right. These peace-people aren’t very peaceful. Today (Sunday, March 23, 2003,) I was out protesting with a sign that said, “Thank you American troops” and on the other side it side “Keep America free for me”. I also had an American flag and an American shirt. I was with my mother who also had a sign, American flag, and an American shirt. Most people were honking in support, but some were saying horrible things. One man called us Nazis! What ignorance! And one woman said, while looking at my mother, “This war is wrong!” I said, “It would be wrong if we didn’t.” She walked away with angry mutters I could not hear. She was obviously not expecting a rebuttal from me. She thought I was going to be like the other kids that protest what their parents tell them to and don’t know what their protesting. Well, let me tell you I know what I’m protesting. Well let me get back to the point. My mother and I were crossing the street, and happened to be in the middle of the street, waiting for the light to change. I was holding my poster towards the street with the side that said, “Thank you American troops”. A man drove by in a grey hatch-back with his widow rolled down and said something bad to me. I said, “U.S.A!” And he drove by and through water from a water bottle on me, my sigh (that said “Thank you American troops”,) and my flag. I flipped him the bird (sorry I was really angry,) and saw peace bumper stickers all over his car. Ok, let me tell you all the things that are wrong with that. First of all, there were three guys on the other side of the street that he drove by that had a giant bed sheet that said we support Bush and the war and things like that. He was so much of a coward that he didn’t say or throw anything at them (they were strong guys) but threw water at the little girl on the other side of the street when the guys weren’t looking (they had a video camera.) Second, I never said I was anti-war or pro-war. My sign just said, “Thank you American troops”. This guy is a coward, anti-American, ignorant, fool. If this guy would have just thought about what he was doing or have even read my sign, he wouldn’t have done what he did. And anyways, did he really think that a little bit of water was going to stop me? He might as well have thrown flint and tinder at me, because all he did was get me angry and invoke my flames of patriotism. I WILL go back on the streets and exercise my freedom of expression and speech. It wouldn’t have mattered if he had shot me, because if he had shot at me, he would have wounded my body, not my spirit or what I believe in. I believe in freedom, my president, and my country.
GOD BLESS AMERICA!
P.S.- Can some one please tell me why these anti-war people are so mad? And if they hate America so much, why don’t they move to Canada or something?
You recognize the sacrifices of our armed forces and the price of freedom, and you have a strong sense of conviction and courage. You may describe yourself as a little girl, but you're already twice the "man" that coward will ever be. :-) Keep your enthusiasm, and know that you're part of a strong majority. That's why these "peace" protesters are increasingly desperate.
Hearing from young people like you gives me strength that our country will continue to be great.
Congratulations!! Wear the water soaked clothes as a sign that you are right, and they are wrong. You are right, the guy is a gutless coward that probably beats his wife too. It is the last resort (sometimes the first) of this type of liberals to attack with name calling or water throwing when they run out of arguments for their positions (which is usually right after the one sound bite that they have memorized for the day) Keep up the good work. You might consider standing with the big burly guys though, just in case, or get some friends.
Because they are the usual "losers" of society: they know nothing, do nothing and resent the rest of us who not only can but do contribute positively to society.
They believe religiously that dumbest of all idiocies: "Love your neighbor or I'll kill you!"
They are the druggies, the muggers, the road ragers, the domestic abusers of our society, operating in a "higher moral" mode. Makes them feel momentarily "better".
They go for the women. I was at the perimeter of one rally during the Florida recounts, and was shoved by a man who objected to my sign. A second one later tried to tear the sign out of my hands (but stopped, naturally, when several big freeper guys saw him and called him on it). I was also spat at by some old coot at one of the first antiwar rallies in NY, which we were there to counter.
But I am three times your age.
Be warned, if you do this again, that many of these enlightened men on the left are not only cowards, but closet mysogynists. So station yourself & your mom near some big guys and you'll be much less of a target.
Read sometime about the INF (Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces) controversy during the early to mid 1980's. As you may know from history, the old Soviet Union (the Russian Empire under communism) then controlled the whole eastern part of Europe, such as Poland and East Germany (which was then a separate state) and a number of other countries.
The President before Reagan, Jimmy Carter (1976-1980), was ineffective and did not confront the Soviets, except belatedly when they invaded Afghanistan. Because America had signaled weakness and self-doubt, the Soviets became very aggressive, as evil regimes always do when they sense weakness.
They did many evil things at this time, such as carefully cultivating communism in South and Central America, and shipping arms to communist regimes and revolutionaries there. Their ultimate goal was a communist regime in Mexico, right on America's borders. They also discovered a modern style of terrorism that was being used by communist revolutionaries in Central America, and very intentionally spread these techniques to the Middle East and elsewhere. They brought terrorists together from all over the world so they could train together and learn from each other. They taught terrorism to Yasser Arafat, and to many other notorious murderers as well.
Another and more immediately noticable thing the Soviets did about this time was to place hundreds of intermediate-range nuclear missles into Eastern Europe, with nearly a thousand warheads. (Each missle had three or four "warheads" or nuclear bombs.) These were fast strike missles designed to hit targets in Western Europe. Because there were only about a hundred and fifty significant military targets in Western Europe, the communists were unmistakably threatening to target cities in the event of a war and to kill millions.
Did protesters take to the streets in Western Europe against the provocative nuclear threat from the Communists? No they did not, geckogirl. They did not even do so when the weak President Carter announced plans to place NATO missles in Western Europe in response to the Russians. (The North Atlantic Treaty Alliance is the mutual defense organization that coordinated the militaries of America and Western Europe against the Soviets, and which still exists today.) The appeasers knew that President Carter would make a "deal," even if it was a weak and unfair one, with the Communists.
The protesters and appeasers then were just like they are now. They don't care about making threats really go away, they just don't want to have to think about them. The appeasers back then didn't care if the Soviet missles stayed there in Eastern Europe, armed and ready to destroy their cities, as long as their leaders would help them to pretend that they didn't matter, and that the communists weren't really aggressive and weren't really evil, and that if we were nice to them and didn't make them angry it would all be O.K. This is one reason they are angry at us and at the President. We make it harder from them to "pretend" in this way.
But guess what happened, geckogirl, when Carter (a Democrat) left office, and Reagan (a Republican) became President. Well, it was a lot like today. Reagan actually said, in plain language, that the Soviet Union was "evil," and that the West must oppose Soviet expansionism and secure free governments around the globe. This worried the Soviets, but the people that it scared the most were the appeasers and the leftists in the West! People in Europe started calling Reagan a "cowboy," a "warmonger," and saying he was stupid and "simplistic." Sound familiar?
Anyway, now that a Republican was in office the "peace," or "nuclear freeze," protests started, and they quickly became as large, loud and ugly as they are now, at least in Europe. If you were old enough to remember them, like me, you would be having a real deja vu experience now.
Reagan, like Bush, was careful and deliberate. He was no reckless "cowboy" (in the sense the appeasers meant). He made it very clear that he was going to negotiate with the Soviets, and would try thereby to avoid deploying the NATO missles, or would scale down the deployment. The only thing was, he wasn't going to make a bad agreement with the Soviets. He didn't want a symbolic or ineffective deal that would just make people feel better; he would insist on a deal that would actually make people safer and, ideally, one that would hurt our enemy, the Soviets, as well.
But none of that mattered. The truth didn't matter. And the Soviet missles sure as heck didn't matter; not really, not to the protesters. The "peace" protesters (then and now) did in fact care more about feeling "safer" than actually being safer. They didn't want to hear the truth, because the truth was that the Soviet deployment was an act of aggression. The missles were destabilizing. They were a threat, and one that the Soviets would surely use against Europe one day, probably not by firing them off, but by using them to intimidate and bully, and drive a wedge between Europe and America. (Their very existence provided an alternative to the use of intercontinental missles, and thereby created the notion of a "theater wide" nuclear war, that is one confined to Europe. The Soviets whispered to the Europeans that "the Americans will use that as an excuse to stay out of it, and abandon you.") The TRUTH made the protesters feel bad, it made them feel unsafe. Of course they actually were unsafe in fact, but they didn't (and don't) want to hear that. It's the same now. If you try to deal with a real problem, you will inevitably make these people made, because they simply don't want to acknowledge the problem or the threat. They don't want to acknowledge that our enemies mean us harm, and will turn on anyone who reminds them of this simple fact.
Just as "peace" protesters today hardly ever criticize Saddam, and instead save their venom for Bush (the "real terrorist") so the "nuclear freeze" people never talked about the Soviet missles. The freeze was to apply to US (the free countries of NATO) not the THEM (the communists).
Reagan almost turned this all around when he (or actually a young fellow in the Pentagon named Richard Perle, who you may see today, with gray hair, on your television screen from time to time) conceived the bold scheme of proposing in negotiations that the Soviets remove ALL their missles in exchange for NATO scrapping their deployment. This was what the protesters claimed they wanted, right? No missles? Well, it was until the Soviets claimed they would walk away from negotions, and would "retaliate" against NATO deployments, and until they passed their orders along to the leaders of the nuclear freeze movement (which they financed). And so the protesters went back to the streets.
This went on for two or three YEARS, geckogirl. But you know what happened? Despite all the talking-heads (and many government officials) who said the the Soviets would never agree to the "zero option," and despite all the protesters who claimed Reagan was a fool, Reagan was proved right. He stuck to his guns and the Soviets DID remove the missles in the end.
Reagan never got half the credit he deserved, for this and for many other things, but he prevailed. And as Reagan himself was fond of saying, "it's amazing what can be accomplished if you don't care who gets the credit."
But don't you ever think that the loud people in the streets with their mean spirits and ugly signs are the ones that really matter. It's people like you -- good citizens -- that really matter. Reagan never could have done what he did without the trust of millions of Americans. Sadly there will always be some, in our own country, who stand with our enemies and who ignore their evil. I know that's difficult for an idealistic young person to come to terms with, but it's a fact. It's also all the more reason for you to keep doing what you're doing!
I feel for ya, youngin. I really do. :-)
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