Posted on 03/03/2004 12:05:09 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Do you use that phrase for everyone. Less hyperbole is needed.
It is strange why the grandfather chose an Irish name and moved to Boston with its large Irish population. Brookline, though, was a WASP stronghold when he lived there, and became quite Jewish in subsequent years.
I don't know why he converted, but many Jews of his generation felt alienated from Orthodoxy and saw conversion as a step towards assimilation. Some felt as though they were already virtually in the gentile world, and conversion would simply be an acknowledgement of this. Many did so for purely practical and opportunistic reasons, but Frederick Kerry does seem to have taken it seriously. He may not have been the only Austrian to take the name Kerry, either. Manfred Kerry, a politician in Vienna, claims to be a distant cousin.
You may have a point about Richard Kerry. I don't know if he blamed America for his father's suicide, but he was probably looking for something to attach himself to in order to make sense of the world and have a place in it, and found it in the Old World. Perhaps he was returning to such roots as he did have. Perhaps Harvard opened the European option for him and made it hard for him to find a place in ordinary, everyday America without opening the world of Brahmin Boston to him.
John Kerry inherited his father's marginal position: not quite being a Brahmin, but not quite being anything else. So perhaps he clings to his father's book and ideas as one legacy or root that he clearly does have. Father and son shared the arrogance of the person who always claims to know better than others, and the frustration that this isn't recognized by people. Apparently, European opinion and One World sentiment became the rock they built their would view upon.
This is truly strange, though:
If Richard and John Kerry were not in perfect political sync, it was because the father, in an inversion of the usual dynamic, was more radical than the son. John Kerry, for instance, had grown enthusiastic about John F. Kennedy and his robust, anti-communist foreign policy. Indeed, it was his fervor for Kennedy's "bear any burden" call to service that largely inspired Kerry to join the Navy. Richard Kerry, by contrast, was more skeptical about New Frontier idealism. In a 1996 interview with The Boston Globe, he groused, "[John's] attitude was gung ho: had to show the flag. He was quite immature in that direction." When John Kerry came back from Vietnam, his father pushed him to be more outspoken in his opposition to the war. "When Kerry refused to speak out against the government [while in uniform], suddenly his father felt like he was being a wimp," says Brinkley. "[So he] encouraged his son to take off the uniform and to become a critic."
What's also curious about the article is that it doesn't let on how Richard Kerry supported himself after leaving the government.
Kerry Ortega BUMP
CW this is good.
Can't believe we would elect one of "them" president.
Time to BUMP!
OMG!
Yeah this yahoo ( I since have tracked even more on him) was a "test pilot" ( and that's a laugh because he wasn't doing anything other than ferryiong aircraft from spot to spot) in Alabama...managed to avoid ANY true combat duty ( kind of like his son...puffery all around)...Dicvk and JF seem to be cut from the same cloth...commies all
The facts are there.
ping
Meaning????
I think this is worth the time reading......
Subject: An Interesting Speech By A Navy Captain
Subject: WW III
Read the catalogue of events in this brief piece. Then, ask yourself how anyone can take the position that all we have to do is bring our troops home from Iraq, sit back, reset the snooze alarm, go back to sleep, and no one will ever bother us again?
In case you missed it, World War III began in November 1979................that alarm has been ringing for years!
U.S. Navy Captain Ouimette is the Executive Officer at Naval Air Station, Pensacola, Florida. Here is a copy of the speech he gave last month. It is an accurate account of why we are in so much trouble today and why the
action we are taking now is so necessary and critical for our future as a free society.
AMERICA NEEDS TO WAKE UP!
That's what we think we heard on the 11th of September 2001 (When more than 3,000 Americans were killed) and maybe it was, but I think it should have been "Get Out of Bed!" In fact, I think the alarm clock has been
buzzing since 1979 and we have continued to hit the snooze button and roll over for a few more minutes of peaceful sleep since then.
It was a cool fall day in November 1979 in a country going through a religious and political upheaval when a group of Iranian students attacked and seized the American Embassy in Tehran. This seizure was an outright
attack on American soil; it was an attack that held the world's most powerful country hostage and paralyzed a Presidency. The attack on this sovereign U. S. embassy set the stage for events to follow for the next 23 years.
America was still reeling from the aftermath of the Vietnam experience and had a serious threat from the Soviet Union when then, President Carter, had to do something. He chose to conduct a clandestine raid in the desert. The ill-fated mission ended in ruin, but stood as a symbol of America's inability to deal with terrorism.
America's military had been decimated and downsized/right sized since the end of the Vietnam War. A poorly trained, poorly equipped and poorly organized military was called on to execute a complex mission that was
doomed from the start.
Shortly after the Tehran experience, Americans began to be kidnapped and killed throughout the Middle East. America could do little to protect her citizens living and working abroad. The attacks against US soil continued.
In April of 1983 a large vehicle packed with high explosives was driven into the US Embassy compound in Beirut. When it explodes, it kills 63 people. The alarm went off again and America hit the Snooze Button once
more.
Then just six short months later a large truck heavily laden down with over 2500 pounds of TNT smashed through the main gate of the US Marine Corps headquarters in Beirut and 241 US servicemen are killed. America
mourns her dead and hit the Snooze Button once more.
Two months later in December 1983, another truck loaded with explosives is driven into the US Embassy in Kuwait, and America continues her slumber.
The following year, in September 1984, another van was driven into the gates of the US Embassy in Beirut and America slept.
Soon the terrorism spreads to Europe. In April 1985 a bomb explodes in a restaurant frequented by US soldiers in Madrid.
Then in August a Volkswagen loaded with explosives is driven into the main gate of the US Air Force Base at Rhein-Main; 22 are killed and the snooze alarm is buzzing louder and louder as US interests are continually
attacked.
Fifty-nine days later a cruise ship, the Achille Lauro is hijacked and we watched as an American in a wheelchair is singled out of the passenger list and executed.
The terrorists then shift their tactics to bombing civilian airliners when they bomb TWA Flight 840 in April of 1986 that killed 4 and the most tragic bombing, Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, killing 259.
Clinton treated these terrorist acts as crimes; in fact we are still trying to bring these people to trial. These are acts of war.
The wake up alarm is getting louder and louder. The terrorists decide to bring the fight to America. In January 1993, two CIA agents are shot and killed as they enter CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
The following month, February 1993, a group of terrorists are arrested after a rented van packed with explosives is driven into the underground parking garage of the World Trade Center in New York City. Six people are killed and over 1000 are injured. Still this is a crime and not an act of war?
The Snooze alarm is depressed again.
Then in November 1995 a car bomb explodes at a US military complex in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia killing seven service men and women.
A few months later in June of 1996, another truck bomb explodes only 35 yards from the US military compound in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. It destroys the Khobar Towers, a US Air Force barracks, killing 19 and injuring
over 500. The terrorists are getting braver and smarter as they see that America does not respond decisively.
They move to coordinate their attacks in a simultaneous attack on two US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. These attacks were planned with precision. They kill 224. America responds with cruise missile attacks and goes back to sleep.
The USS Cole was docked in the port of Aden, Yemen for refueling on 12 October 2000, when a small craft pulled along side the ship and exploded killing 17 US Navy Sailors. Attacking a US War Ship is an act of war,
but we sent the FBI to investigate the crime and went back to sleep.
And of course you know the events of 11 September 2001. Most Americans think this was the first attack against US soil or in America. How wrong they are. America has been under a constant attack since 1979 and we chose to hit the snooze alarm and roll over and go back to sleep.
In the news lately we have seen lots of finger pointing from every high official in government over what they knew and what they didn't know. But if you've read the papers and paid a little attention I think you can see exactly what they knew. You don't have to be in the FBI or CIA or on the National Security Council to see the pattern that has been developing since 1979.
Our President is right on when he says we are engaged in a war. I think we have been in a war for the past 23 years and it will continue until we as a people decide enough is enough.
America needs to "Get out of Bed" and act decisively now. America has been changed forever. We have to be ready to pay the price and make the sacrifice to ensure our way of life continues. We cannot afford to keep
hitting the snooze button again and again and roll over and go back to sleep.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Admiral Yamamoto said "...it seems all we have done is awakened a sleeping giant."
This is the message we need to disseminate to terrorists around the world.
Support Our Troops and support President Bush for having the courage, political or militarily, to address what so many who preceded him didn't have the backbone to do, both Democrat and Republican. This is not a
political thing to be hashed over in an election year; this is an AMERICAN thing.
This is about our Freedom and the Freedom of our children and grandchildren in years to come.
Please forward this, especially to the young people and all those who dozed off in history class and who seem so quick to protest such a necessary military activity.
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