Posted on 10/14/2004, 4:56:51 PM by Lacey
Remember when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?
Not familiar with that version of history? Me, neither.
The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and even though Adolf Hitler didn't have a hand in it, it triggered the United States going to war in Europe.
Hindsight permits us to see the wisdom in President Franklin Roosevelt's decision go to war in Europe, as well the Pacific - after Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.
But it also affords us the opportunity to question why it took so long for us to become engaged in the first place. Why were thousands murdered in Nanking or sent to "labor" camps in Poland or killed in London streets before we stepped in?
Why did nearly 3,000 of our countrymen and women die at Pearl Harbor and other islands across the Pacific, including the Philippines, before the "sleeping giant" awoke?
Contemporary history abounds with instances of our leaders hesitating when, in hindsight, clear action seemed apparent.
Today John Kerry and his cronies, their ideological convictions mounted on Tinker Toys, are using hindsight to blast away at the president. Hindsight provides for the pithy "wrong war, wrong place, wrong time" mantra.
Hindsight allows Kerry to dismiss intelligence that seemingly angered him and now claim he would have acted differently. Hindsight is Kerry's ocean breeze, blowing him away from his own variety of statements supporting the ouster of Saddam Hussein and blowing him back with a different story altogether.
The president sincerely believed, as did Kerry and others, that Hussein was a weapons-stockpiling maniac. And given Saddam's behavior during the 12-year "rush to war" it's easy to see why most all of us believed this.
In truth, Saddam was a weapon of mass destruction. He wrote checks to terrorists whose family members blew up innocent people. He harbored international terrorists. He and his sons tortured and slaughtered Iraqis in fashions that Stephen King wouldn't pen.
During this time, Germany, France and Russia - you know, the allies Kerry's going to charm into joining us in Iraq - slipped Hussein billions of dollars in a remarkably under-reported food for oil scandal.
Sure, al-Qaida hatched a plot and killed nearly 3,000 people on September 11, 2001. But the fingerprints of countless radical Islamic terrorist groups and their financiers are all over that mass murder.
For too long, we looked the other way as groups such as Hamas, Palestine Islamic Jihad, Armed Islamic Group and the like murdered people year in and year out.
Ignoring the loose affiliations between madmen and madwomen is as unacceptable today as it should have been in 1936 when Germany, Italy and Japan created their alliance.
The weapons debate is the grand diversion. Weapons or not, we hold the moral high ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, because hindsight's always revealed that liberating people and drawing a bead on evil aren't things to be ashamed of.
That's why the president was and remains right about ridding the world of Saddam Hussein.
Gardner is an Albuquerque writer and political consultant. His column runs on Wednesdays.
America has a choice between a Chamberlain or a Churchill.
I hope and pray we make the right choice. I'm doing my part.
No, Kerry is not even a Chamberlain (sp?). Talk to the North Vietnamese and then decide what he is.
Very nice article indeed.
bump
Right. That was a different war, no doubt. But the country is different now too.
Would there have been more war protests if our nation had the present mindset back then? Maybe we don't remember the whole piucture and there WERE anti-war protests an criticism back then. But surely nothing like the the attacks on Bush, no?
I don't know the answers to these questions. Some cannot be answered.
I'm doing my part also. We just had a "chat" in the lunchroom. Most of us are conservatives where I work, but there was one who just hates Bush. I asked him why he didn't like sKerry and he couldn't answer anything but he just hates Bush. Count one less vote from him for Bush.
"slipped Hussein billions of dollars in a remarkably under-reported food for oil scandal."
Like the DNC, the UN is a sacred cow that is protected by the MSM to promote its political agenda. When you hear the MSM, in addition to what's being twisted and distorted, there's alot of spin going into what you don't hear-what the press doesn't tell us can be as slanted as what they do. The MSM needs to know that constant spin is noticed-constatntly.
Yep, we all have to do something. If you get enough drops of water, you get the Pacific Ocean.
I've largely given up on trying to turn Bush-haters. It seems to me like the person who is most successful at that is John Kerry himself - every time Kerry opens his mouth, he says something ridiculous, even if his smooth-talking manner fools some people.
I don't think so. You see, wars are okay with Leftists provided that it's Democrats who wage them. If a Republican wages a war, then it's "racist," "unjust" and "blood for oil." This is evidenced by the silence of the "anti-war" movement when Clinton sent troops to Kosovo, Bosnia, Mogadishu, et cetera. Those same silent "anti-war" groups are now howling bloody murder over Iraq (just like they did over Afghanistan).
The reason? Republicans put America first. Democrats, on the other hand, put only Democrats first.
Does this guy also cut off his nose to spite his face?
No, Hitler didn't bomb Pearl Harbor (sorry, Bluto), but the US didn't declare on Germany in response, either. Hitler declared war on the US several days later. You could write a good alternate history on how WW2 would have turned out if Hitler hadn't done FDR this favor, with a US population enraged at the Japs and willing to put off dealing with Germany.
Right. Even Germany's declaration of war would have been spun as somehow being our fault, and Roosevelt criticized for his "rush to war" and not using war against Germany as a "last resort."
God, please let George Bush be re-elected!!!
I have also heard that the usual "useful idiots" on the left were WITH the war effort since the USSR was our ally, and that these folks had been pacifists until Hitler broke the peace pact with Stalin. I'm not sure of my facts, but I'll throw it out there for what it's worth.
Amen.
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