Silly old kids joke, I know, but it leads into another question: when is a liberal not a liberal? Answer: a liberal is ALWAYS a liberal, no matter how hard it tries to pretend it isn't.
I've seen a lot of strained, forced behavior in my day, but Spencer Ackerman takes the cake in his piece entitled The Bitter End. I can't even begin to figure out exactly where he's going with his article, it's that convoluted and, as my seventeen year old son would say, "random." On the one hand, he tries to make the case for Congressional demands that the war in Iraq come to an end; on the other, he tries to show the troops impressions on how they feel about a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.
Haunted by Vietnam, Democrats are determined to express support for the troops. This is admirable. The truth of the matter, however, is this: many troops in Iraq, perhaps even most of them, want to stay and fight. That doesn’t mean that we should stay in Iraq any longer. It does mean, however, that if Democrats want to bridge the divide between themselves and the military—an effort further complicated by their opposition to the war—they’re going to have to recognize that arguing in the name of the troops isn’t going to work.
Okay, so the Democrats don't want the war, but they don't want to be seen as not supporting the troops, so they try to say that since they care about the troops, they want them safe, let's bring them home? Is that the message? John "Breck Boy" Edwards seems to think so. I hope to gods I don't see any of his damned suggested signs this weekend, either, by the way. I think I may just have to go off on someone.
Ahem.
Sorry, sidetracked.
We continue.
Democrats, liberals, have tried to use this "protect the troops" tactic for quite a little while now. Is our military so pitiful it needs the brave, protective Congress to protect it? I don't think so. "George W. LIED to the American people, he LIED about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, he LIED about al-Qaeda involvement in Iraq." Is that a fact. I reckon Bill and Hillary Clinton and Al Gore lied about it, too, then, because they said the same things before W was elected to office. Amazing how liberals gloss over that and ignore it.
Soldiers may see that their unit is accomplishing its objectives and feel a boost in morale. They may search a house and find a weapons cache, for instance, or they may track down a crucial member of a terrorist cell and take him into custody. Frustratingly, as obvious and long as the list of tactical successes may be, absent dramatic political improvements they rarely coalesce on their own into a change in a counterinsurgency’s overall fortunes. And these aren’t questions soldiers can afford to concern themselves with. “Once you’re engaged, eyeball to eyeball, you tend not to think about those strategic issues at all. You’re trying to shoot and shoot back,” says retired General Merrill McPeak, a former Air Force chief of staff and Vietnam veteran. “Your entire focus becomes tactical.”
In addition, with the bar for success getting increasingly lower, even small improvements feel big. “They have a new commander over there, and at least the appearance and the rhetoric of a new strategy,” says military expert Richard Kohn of the University of North Carolina. The soldiers, says Kohn, will tell themselves, “All right, this is it. This is the one last chance.” (Indeed, this is almost exactly what Smith and Miller expressed to me.)
Okay, has the man not heard of gathering intelligence and information from unit and squad debriefing sessions? You put all the information together that comes in from the battlefield, from the rear, from the support units, the firebases, and so on and so on and so on and you put together a big clear picture of what's going on.
Fortunately, Congress seems to be, grudgingly, admitting at last that we can't abandon Iraq or the Middle East. For the record, before I include what follows, I want it made perfectly clear for the record that I still WILL NOT watch CNN news for their traitorous act of showing an American soldier being executed by a sniper first on television, then as a download on their site. WUA still uses them as a source, however, and sent this to me, ergo I felt compelled to include it. CNN remains, however, on my shitlist until they make ammends for treasonous acts.
House, Senate pass war funding bill
POSTED: 0202 GMT (1002 HKT), May 24, 2007
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Congress sent a $120 billion war spending bill to the White House late Thursday, abandoning a call for most U.S. troops to leave Iraq after an earlier veto by President Bush.
The bill replaces the earlier goal of withdrawing U.S. combat troops by March 2008 with a series of political benchmarks for Iraqi leaders to meet in order to receive continued American support.
But the move sharply split the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives, where 140 members -- including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- voted against the plan.
Simmer down, Nancy, at least your plastic surgeon hasn't signed up. It's about damned time that Congress did something right. Lord knows they've done enough wrong, ESPECIALLY in the last six months since this Congress was sworn in.
This bickering back and forth, the media lies, the Congress men and women and Senators with yellow stripes down their backs, are wearing on the people in the uniforms of our nation's service. Instead of being part of the solution, they're being part of the problem. A HUGE part of the problem. In some cases, they ARE the problem:
Carlson: Shift news to successes in Iraq, soldier urges.
JOHN CARLSON'S IOWA
A tired and disgusted Iowa soldier fired off an e-mail a few days ago, telling family and friends how things are going in Iraq.
A Blackhawk helicopter pilot, Chief Warrant Officer Jim Funk has flown more than 80 combat missions since he arrived there in October.
He described his Boone-based unit's successes after 5,000 hours of flying out of LSA Anaconda, a huge American base north of Baghdad. He talked about the tragedies he and his fellow Iowans have witnessed and his worries of becoming complacent as he goes on mission after mission.
Morale?
"We're treading water," the Ames man told the people closest to him. "We continue to kick butt on missions and take care of each other, even though we know the American public and government DOES NOT stand behind us.
Ohhhh, they all say they support us, but how can you support me (the soldier) if you don't support my mission or my objectives. We watch the news over here. Every time we turn it on we see the American public and Hollywood conducting protests and rallies against our 'illegal occupation' of Iraq."
His greatest frustration? The performance of the people who deliver the news to the American people
Go read the full article, read his letter, his words are compelling and from the heart.
Can a liberal pass himself off as a conservative? Not really. Not well, at any rate.
This is Memorial Day weekend. Honor well those who have fallen in defense of our freedom, in defense of our way of life. Respect those who wear the uniform still today, and support them. Not just with lip service, really, honestly support them.
They put themselves in harms way to make sure that the American people don't have to.
God bless them one and all.
To our soldiers, Marines, airmen and sailors, you have the thanks of this veteran, and I salute you. And I think regular readers of our site know that that ain't just lip service...
Once and Always, an American Fighting Man