Posted on 10/10/2004 10:49:58 AM PDT by pickrell
To the good people of Kabul and elsewhere in Afghanistan;
I read with dismay, but no real surprise, that the elections being held there today are now labeled by the opposition to President Karsai as being flawed and illegal. You may be comforted to know that though your democracy is newly born, purchased with the blood of many Americans and Afghanis alike, you are by no means the first to have candidates threaten to denounce the outcome.
There is another political party that beat you to the punch, when it comes to whining about their losing a national election. Here, we call them the Democrats.
So let me warn you what you may expect. You'll find them fabricating stories about disenfranchisement, and demanding endless recounts unless they get the outcome they want. Now I realize that you are taken aback at that thought, but you will find that to some people, the lust for power over other people's lives will overrule any reluctance to endanger your fragile democracy. I'm embarrassed to have to admit that for many months after our election here, we watch them shop for judge after judge until the madness was finally put down by our Supreme Court. (Not the State Supreme court in Florida, which had no qualms about rewriting whatever laws were necessary in order to try to engineer a Democratic victory by judicial fiat, but rather by our highest court, The Supreme Court, which determined that enough was finally enough.)
You must not be shocked by this. After all of the hanging chads, and all of the inky thumbs, and especially, all that so many have risked to enable the people of your country to shake off the chains of the enslavers, simply for the hope that someday, your women may become people instead of property, and your children may aspire to become fathers, instead of human conveyances for vest bombs, you will unfortunately face much more.
Be warned. Defeating the influence of the junior Yasser Arafats among you will not come quickly nor all in one step. You must be braced for the naysayers who will take every side of every issue, and then leap up to claim that the fight was worth it...if it succeeds; or else that it was the wrong revolution at the wrong time...if it falters. The real believers in the Everyside mentality may change positions repeatedly and actually be hailed by their supporters as nuanced thinkers. Yes, Virginia, there IS a waffler.
Because, since you are new to elected leadership, you must realize that two kinds of would-be leaders exist.
One is the hard kind; the kind that professional soldiers admire and will fight for. He's the kind of leader that demands a careful plan, based on the best information available at the time, then commits your military and nation to a strategy. Because, excepting news people, all honest people understand that infallibility of information is the province of the Pope and the professional waffler. Any commander who has faced battle will tell you that the most carefully orchestrated plan always begins it's disintegration immediately after it is implemented. If they are skillful and lucky, it accomplishes a good part of it's goals, and God, willing, at the lowest cost possible in lives. Real commanders understand that intelligence is imperfect. And they realize that disinformation is part of the challenge that they face.
It is somewhat like what our President Eisenhower faced here in the late 1950's, when all intelligence indications were, and all boasts made by the Krushev regime supported, that the Soviets were turning out nuclear missiles like "little sausages stamped out by our factories...".
Our President sent U-2 overflights over the Soviet Union to obtain evidence of the deployment of these missiles. Like homicide car bombers are today, ICBM's were a new threat to us then, and the President had no hesitation to use every intelligence tool at his disposal to determine the truth. The Soviets field- tested one of their new antiaircraft missile systems on one of our U-2's and the rest is history. Colonel Powers was displayed before the world, much like other captives have been of late.
The truth was only discovered later, in that the Soviet Union wasn't hiding the huge number of missiles that they had deployed...the truth was that the exact opposite was the case, and that they were desparately hiding the fact that they didn't have those missiles, that their weakness led them to put into effect a massive disinformation campaign, coupled with a ruthless security system that made it impossible to discover that the "missile gap" that our news media trumpeted, actually existed at that time in our favor.
But the "cleverness" of the portly little Russian dictator backfired, and prompted us to act, thus igniting the largest arms buildup in our history. This enraged western leftists, like no mere 10 million Soviet murders of their own citizens possibly could, and left them angry that now, because of that little twerp, it would be even harder for the Soviets to carry out their impolitic goal of "...we will bury you..."
No, these threats would not have produced a "rush to cold war", if the late 1950's had been gifted with an ultra-liberal Democratic President. In that case, we would have announced summits, and held meetings, and even, perish the thought, deplored their actions, while harping at giving the sanctions time to work.
Somewhat like FDR did when Japan invaded Manchuria in 1932 I believe it was. And then invaded China 4 years or so later. He applied sanctions against the Japanese, embargoed oil, and didn't rush to war. He gave the sanctions nearly 5 years to work, far fewer, of course than the 1991 to 2002 timeframe where we applied sanctions to Iraq, but all in all, a typical response by a Democratic administration. And these sanctions worked so well in stopping the militarization of Japan that we now have a memorial to them in Pearl Harbor and in cemetaries all around the world.
Recently, a report from one of our investigators detailed that no "little sausages" of mass destruction were lying around in warehouses in Iraq, and that no nuclear program existed after 1991. And the blow-dried media types here have sniffed that the Administration should have known that.
After all, when one of Saddam Hussein's son-in-laws defected from Iraq,(if memory serves me- in the mid 1990's I believe it was), he revealed that a secret nuclear program was in effect in Iraq, and thereby provoked an immediate investigation by the civilized world. Now we know that that didn't happen, and that his pictures on the news were in fact digitally altered pictures of Jane Fonda sitting on an antiaircraft gun.
And when this same non-existent son-in-law was interviewed live in front of the world, we NOW know that his voice that we thought we all heard...was ACTUALLY an electronically altered version of a 1980's Senate debate where the Democrats were fighting to unilaterally disarm, and thereby hand the Soviets license to continue the enslavement of hundreds of millions of people behind the iron curtain forever. Except that the "amiable dunce" in the White House at that time stood firm against the current of appeasement and surrender, and horrified the Europeans by standing up to the "Evil empire". Is this starting to have a familiar ring to it?
And when this same son-in-law who never existed, was subsequently lured back to Iraq, and then killed gruesomely, the truth is now exposed that he was killed not for exposing the ambitions of Saddam, but rather because he left without paying up his bid-euchre IOU's to Saddam.
But we seem to have a complete liberal news blackout of this and other inconvenient card-welsher paybacks. We don't precisely know how his security types hoodwinked Jordanian and other intelligence services, convincing them that WMD's were already deployed with his Republican Guard units. But I suspect he had ample help from the French, the Germans and the Russians, all of whom were accepting huge amounts of oil-for-food bribes to run interference for him, and second the motion on all of his bluffs about his "vunderkrieg" weapons. After all, money talks when despicable people listen.
You must, however, realize that there is the second type of would-be leader. He's the soft kind; who waits until his nation is committed in a life and death struggle against unspeakable evil, and then carefully works out how he can oppose everything that might later turn out not to work so well, while at the same time trying to insinuate himself into the limelight claiming unwavering support for everything that luckily worked out well...all well after the fact, and all the while without being noticed as doing such. The reason that he must do this, is because he has never taken risks, and simply waits to see which way the wind is blowing after the others have faced the guns.
It's kind of like...well...for instance, like fleeing in a swiftboat while others stay to rescue their comrades in a disabled and helpless boat. After a period of time, it can safely be determined from a distance that the ones who risked being shot to pieces, and disregarded the danger, through love of their comrades, and acceptance of duty, can be observed to not be fired upon.
At that point, it is safe to roar back and announce your heroism to the world, especially if you are the one who later writes the report. That way your heroism is documented. Then, it's only a quick stop to pick up your hero movies, carefully staged earlier and safely in the "can", and it's on to politics. With a quick stop, of course, to slander those who stayed to fight, and the rest is simply...history rewritten.
You will wonder how this can be, until you mature as a people and realize that whoever writes and reports the stories, engineers the winners and the losers. Our network anchors will demonstrate this, as you get cable installed.
But don't feel too badly about that yet. Your news networks will still have to learn about the acceptable lies of holding the different candidates to different standards. But perhaps yours, unlike our ABC news people, won't be stupid enough to allow the truth to be seen by rigging the deception...in a written memo! This must be kept as a quiet conspiracy, without evidence. (If, of course, you assume that the audience is blind and stupid.)
It has been clearly shown here in the U.S., that overt slander and forgery can be exposed- witness our CBS fraud team-, and that the only way that deceit can safely take place without exposure is the tried and true method of news embargo. Put anyone on the airwaves that advances your team, and freeze out in silence anything that doesn't.
But you're asking yourselves, "Yet, how can this be? We were told that Western journalists report the news, period! Anything else would be a blatant violation of all that the trade has always espoused, to justify it's untouchability and unaccountability. How can they have a "journalists" candidate? How can they protect "their team"? Is this not the same as what one of your football referees do? Is not the integrity of the game absolutely dependant on the honest, unbiased reliability of your referees?"
Sadly, I need to tell you ahead of time that the real fraud you face will be just that. Here, a number of good journalists, witness our Bernard Goldberg here, actually are sickened by the trashing of the reputation of all journalists, by those who hold a chokehold on the highest profile positions in our media. But they are by far, (in fact by 9 percent to 91 percent), badly outnumbered.
For you can become drunk with your own importance as a "News Star", and begin to believe that you have the right and the duty, along with your co-conspirators, to rig the election news in favor of your "team", while the 9 percent fight vainly to protest and limit the deceptions, and salvage their reputations. This intoxication is a cumulative poison, and will manifest itself most strongly in those reporters who are furthest removed in time from their last real job.
They are committed to slant, smear and distort anything that stands in the way of their aims. You might as well ask how the teachers' unions can steal money from their members contributions and run attack ads about the economy and jobs.
But perhaps your new teachers have seen close up the struggle to be able to learn the truth, and to teach the truth, from other teachers whose agenda is the student, rather than the enrichment of the union. Be prepared; it will happen to you also. But hopefully not before you are prepared as a people to deal with it.
Don't lose faith. Every time evil has been defeated, it has not given up quietly. I realize that you have sent your President over here to express your appreciation, in the same manner as the recent Iraqi President came over here, expecting respectful treatment. And you expected that these two men, whom are hourly targeted for extinction, just like Anwar Sadat was when he risked all for peace and a future for his nation's children, would not be summarily attacked and dismissed by one of our political parties as mere "puppets".
Sadat and many others have paid the ultimate price for their courage, and like your Presidents, have been similarly slandered by the naysayers. After all, while the tanned and manicured Massachusetts types drink their wines here, in their country clubs safe from harm, and announce that virtually all of the conflict's casualties are Americans- your countrymen face death constantly, without media recognition.
And have died in large numbers. But since they hold no club-passes, and aren't part of the tenured crowd, then they hardly qualify as casualties. More perhaps like useful photo ops to expose the ineffectiveness of our joint war on terror.
Stay tough, and believe in your future. It is ours also. There is great evil on both sides of the ocean.
Ron Pickrell, A veteran for Bush
A-democracy-if-we-can-keep-it Ping
Very well written and very articulate. Maybe President Bush should try to find a position on his team for a man of your talents, ability, knowlege and most of all HONOR and INTEGRITY.
You should send this to some Pakistani papers that publish in English. It's not as roundabout a route to the hearts & minds of the Afghani people as it seems at first.
Excellent letter. To bad he doesn't write for the papers.
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A sign is displayed at a movie theater about the Afghan elections next to a Afghan restaurant in the Little Kabul area of Fremont, Calif. Saturday, Oct. 9, 2004. Residents of Little Kabul, the nation's largest concentration of Afghan emigres, are watching closely as their homeland prepares to hold its first direct presidential election. As millions of voters in Afghanistan (news - web sites) get ready to cast ballots Saturday, some residents of Fremont's Little Kabul see the landmark vote as a crucial step for a budding democracy. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)
I appreciate the replies. I am tempted to suggest that we all vote FOR Senator Kerry...before we vote AGAINST him,
but perhaps instead it could be best summed up in the voice of that ascerbic game show host of a few years back..."Senator Kerry...you ARE the weakest link! Goodbye!"
BUMP!!!!
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