Imagine the Year, 1943

RUSH: "Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, fresh from her own trip to Iraq, accused President Bush yesterday of conducting the war by a political calendar, saying he had dispatched the wrong mix of troops to secure the country and that victory is not certain. In an interview on The Today Show yesterday," portions of which we played, "Hillary said that her war zone visit last weekend with not only the military but civilian American representatives revealed that, 'clearly what we're doing now is not an effective strategy. Success at rebuilding Iraq,' she said, 'can only come with the involvement of the United Nations, which has been reluctant to aid U.S. efforts.'"

Don't forget the story we had earlier: 108 Member Nations of the United Nations Declined to Pursue Terrorists! Right here, folks, for those of you watching on the Dittocam. That's it, that I'm holding up so you can read right there, 108 nations, member nations, UN, declined to pursue terrorists, and here's Hillary along with Howard Dean suggesting that we can only win this if we involve this bumbling bunch of Inspector Clouseaus to help us out.

So, my friends, I want to play a little game here. We're going to go back in time, and I want to construct a scenario for you. I want you to imagine that the year is 1943 and that we were attacked nearly two years before at Pearl Harbor, December 7th, 1941. That's two years after Pearl Harbor, I want you to just picture yourself, put yourself there. Our military forces are spread throughout the world. We either fought or are fighting the enemy among other places the Pacific theater, North Africa, Europe, and Southeast Asia. We're fighting on tiny islands and taking huge casualties. We're fighting in jungles and mountain ranges, again taking huge casualties. And along the way we are winning, we are liberating one nation after another, along with millions of people. And then amidst all of this, imagine that there is a left-wing senator from New York. She's never supported the military in her long public career, she has never showed an interest in military needs in her long public career, she was part of an administration that in fact severely reduced and undermined our military force structure, including personnel levels, weapons systems, and armaments, and that same administration largely ignored the growing national security threat posed by the enemy, despite numerous attacks on Americans both here and abroad.

Now, we're still in 1943 and just imagine in essence that Hillary Clinton surfaces two years after Pearl Harbor. Now that pacifist, anti-war liberal senator, only two years after the attack on Pearl Harbor uses her position as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee to travel to certain theaters of combat over the Thanksgiving holiday, not to bolster our troops, but to criticize their commander-in-chief. Imagine had this happened in 1943. She questions the war's progress, she questions the adequacy of our troop levels and even the wisdom of parts of their mission. She questions why we haven't already captured or killed Adolf Hitler or Tojo and she does all of this on foreign soil while our troops are taking casualties. This senator's behavior is even worse than Neville Chamberlain's peace-in-our-time proclamation. At least Chamberlain, once he realized he had been deceived by Hitler, became an ardent supporter of the allied war effort. But not so with this senator. Having been a power behind an administration that appeased terrorists and undermined our military, this senator now seeks to exploit the difficulties of war and occupation as a springboard to her own presidency. Yes, my friends, the senator I speak of is Hillary Clinton. Imagine her pulling this two years after Pearl Harbor. The behavior I speak of is Hillary's during her recent trips to Afghanistan and Iraq. And yesterday, when she returned from her so-called fact finding trip, she was greeted as an important voice by the likes of Katie Couric and the others in the mainstream media.

You know, times have really changed. It wouldn't have occurred to a Republican senator in 1943 to try to exploit the war effort 60 years ago in hopes of making political gains against FDR, at the expense of our war effort around the world. Imagine the morale boost the enemy in Berlin and Tokyo and elsewhere would have received back then if a leading political figure and future presidential hopeful had acted as Hillary has acted today. Imagine the propaganda value such a visit would have had on these regimes, and imagine how demoralizing it would have been to the men and women on the front lines. We are at war today every bit as much as we were at war in World War II. We are a much more prosperous nation today, and so we don't all have to sacrifice, we don't all have to give away things to the effort, we don't have to undergo and endure rationing, because we're a much more prosperous nation today. So many of us are allowed to go on about our lives and treat this war as some minor little skirmish in caves and mountains and deserts somewhere in the Middle East. Except Mrs. Clinton. Mrs. Clinton knows what's at stake here. We are at war every bit as much as we were at war in World War II. We are fighting for the survival of our way of life, and the enemy has the potential of secretly invading our country not with armies but with a handful of wacko fanatics who have the ability of acquiring weapons that can kill tens of millions of people in just, snap, a second.

More Americans died on September 11th than died at Pearl Harbor. We are at war. We're fighting this war all over the place on many fronts. We cannot wait for the enemy to lift his head in order to fight back. We have to take this war to the enemy. And when Hillary Clinton uses her public position to do what she's done, it needs to be highlighted and exposed for what it is. While less blatant, Hillary Clinton's behavior is really no less damaging than Jane Fonda's during the Vietnam War, but there is a big difference. At least Jane Fonda was a private citizen, a mere actress. Hillary Clinton is a senator on the Armed Services Committee, undermining our war effort.

Thanks for the info.

I didn't know Lindburgh came around so completely, but I guess there's a lot about him I didn't know, but have recently found out!

But seriously, I'm glad to see the nation pulled together better in the 40's, but in all honesty I think I was hoping to hear it was all a mess, like it is now.

I thought after 9/11 that we were united, now I see that the Democratic party has become so corrupted by the leftists, and the Clintons, that they are willing to risk western civilization's destruction at the hands of the Islamofacists rather than stand together with the Republicans.

But, I actually think it goes beyond this. I think the Islamofacists, either through design or dumb luck, are exploiting the existing fronts in the culture wars.

Sometimes I wish I could just shut off my brain.

How dare she tell the troops that the country is divided, and there are many questions!?!

The only thing that consoles me is that our millitary is too smart for that "bull-manoor." LOL!

The Hill is as believable as Baghdad Bob, and that goes for Bill "the fool on The Hill," as well. (I'm thinking of the famous "dancing on the beach in the bathing suits" picture....)

Trust me, I was born and raised in NYC, and in fact, I left in late 2001. Hillary is Senator of NY as long as she wants.

NYers were not entirely starstruck. They agree with her, I can tell you that after living there for 33+ years.

They are not growing disenchanted with Hilly. Won't happen. NY has way too many know-it-alls, soccer moms, bright career people to make a clear, reasoned decision. ;-)

No, after Pearl Harbor there wasn't much opposition to WWII, certainly nothing like what we're seeing today. There were some hard core isolationists and Nazi sympathizers who opposed the war, but there numbers were releatively small. There were also some Republican country club business types who looked down there noses at Roosevelt Democrats and thought the war was bad for business, but again fairly small numbers.

What we're seeing today is more of the legacy of the anti-Vietnam boomers.

Actually, I disagree. I do not and did not slight the courage and heroism of the troops in North Africa. And I agree the loss of Cairo would have been very bad for the Allies. But North Africa was a sideshow the Germans should never have gotten into because it was irrelevent to their main objectives of defeating the Sov's and Brits before the U.S. could bring major forces to bear.

After North Africa, we still weren't much closer to getting at Germany, which we knew we would have to invade to make our unconditional surrender demand stick. So, if you wanted to be a quagmire type pessimist in 1943 you could make a case that we'd done an awful lot of fighting for not much strategic gain against the Germans and Japanese.

You and I know, however, that the fighting in North Africa and the South Pacific in 1943 set the stage for the big gains made in 1944. So, the lesson for me is the pro-quagmire folks over Iraq may find the fighting to date has set the stage for the apprehension of Saddam and the roll up of the Baathist dead-enders, at least that's my hope. Yesterday's events gave me a lot of encouragement.

Thanks for those details.

Well, this is bad then, because it demonstrates that for some percentage of our population, not only did 9/11 not change EVERYTHING, the response to it has only fueled their anti-Americanism.

This, in addition to the self-hatred apparant in so much "political correctness" means that in order to save our civilization the left will have to be completely crushed.

You see, this is what I was thinking about today, how the war on "terrorism" is likely to merge with the ongoing culture "wars".

I am very curious to see how Bush does next year. Barring some bizarre event, I think it will tell the tale. I live in the NY Metro area, folks are SO liberal here I often think I have a distorted view. But, then again, I lost $25 bucks to my kid betting that Hillary! would not win, and I was psychotic (as psychotic as any dem) over the Florida fiasco. Well, that was only the first day or two. After that it was kind of fun & certainly historical and interesting. And hey, my guy won, so I got over it. But I guess I can sympathize with the dems frustration over it. But you know the motto: MOVE ON!

If, after 9/11, the country is still actually split 50/50, we are in deep trouble.

NYers were not entirely starstruck. They agree with her, I can tell you that after living there for 33+ years.

They are not growing disenchanted with Hilly. Won't happen. NY has way too many know-it-alls, soccer moms, bright career people to make a clear, reasoned decision. ;-)

I agree. I have lived in Buffalo for 30+ years and I couldn't agree more.

In the last Senate election there was one district in Buffalo that went about 10,000 to, oh, about 750 for ole Hillary. That is what we are up against in this state.

Now I admit that was in a black district here and those poor people have been brainwashed with the liberal mantra for years, but that is just an example of what it will take to break the liberal stranglehold on this part of the world. It's tough.

But! I will will keep the faith, until at least I retire and move the hell out of here!! LOL

You see, this is what I was thinking about today, how the war on "terrorism" is likely to merge with the ongoing culture "wars".

Unfortunately, I think that is exactly what is going on. The Dim's world view was formed by their opposition to Vietnam, which split the party in 1968 and sent most of the pro-defense Dems over to our side. They have transferred their adolescent hatred of Nixon and Vietnam to Bush and Iraq, even though there are major differences between Vietnam and Iraq. None of them can articulate a better policy than Bush's other than the vague call for U.N. involvement, which is a tip off that the cause of their hatred is not policy differences, but differences of culture and self-image.

That said, I believe only 20-30% of the electorate is part of that lefty Bush-hating base. The reason for the 50-50 split in 2000 was that Bush was up against in essence an incumbent administration at a time of unprecedented prosperity and peace. The last election like that was 1988 when Bush 41 won in a landslide. It is a testament to Clinton's unpopularity and the minority status of the core left that Gore could not win despite a stiff wind at his back.

I could be wrong, it's happened before, but I think 2004 will be a re-run of 1972, an election when we were at war and an anti-war Dim took on a Republican war President.

"The last election like that was 1988 when Bush 41 won in a landslide."

I admit, I had to google it, but then I realized it was the Dukakis in the Tank photo. And of course, that was one picture = many words, all stating the Dems can't do national security.

And it is never denied (I've never heard it denied) that this is the public's perception. Sort of unfair to Truman and FDR, but certainly true of the dems since vietman, as you correctly point out. Heck, Nixon even lost that war, the problem is the Dems seem happy to lose.

And look at what they are doing now! Everything to shore up their image as national security losers (at best, if not underminers), and nothing to counter it. Wesley Clark's candidacy hasn't helped at all, it's actually makes it worse since he's been such a prop the whole time. He's like the 5 people you put on stage to play "the crowd".

Well, I remain apprehensive, but, as my tagline says, I think the American people DO get it.

I don't think the Dems could get a clue if they hit clue lotto tomorrow.

Yep, the Dims took exactly the wrong lesson from 2002. They really think they lost because they were supporting Bush's foreign policy, as in the Iraq resolution. They don't get that they lost because they weren't supportive enough, i.e. their refusal to support the homeland security bill for so long. Max Cleland was the poster boy for 2002 - wounded veteran, supportive on Iraq, but opposed homeland security. He got the boot.

So, the Dims think a McGovern type like Dean is the answer. I don't think this is a head fake just to win the primaries. They really are nuts.

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