Posted on 02/17/2007 4:55:47 AM PST by flynmudd
SPOTSYLVANIA, Va. -- He was an American hero. On his second tour of duty in Iraq, he had already served in the Western Pacific and a prior combat tour in Afghanistan. On Friday afternoon, Feb. 16, when Sgt. Joshua Frazier, USMC, was laid to rest in the soil of his native Virginia, his comrades in arms from the 1st Battalion, 6th Marines were fighting terrorists on the mean streets of Ramadi, in Iraq's bloody Al Anbar Province. As Sgt. Frazier's grieving mother was being presented with a carefully folded American flag, the Congress of the United States was debating a meaningless "non-binding resolution" attacking the commander in chief.
Heroes aren't athletes who set new sports records or Hollywood actors who make "daring" films or politicians who make bold promises. Heroes are people who place themselves at risk for the benefit of others. Joshua Frazier was certainly such a man. Unfortunately, there are far too few members of Congress who fit the definition.
At Joshua's funeral, I gave his parents photographs of their son that had been taken a few weeks ago while I was embedded with his unit in Iraq. We had just returned from a patrol to a newly re-opened school where little Iraqi girls were being taught arithmetic. Standing around us in the photo are the Sunni police officers and Shia soldiers who had accompanied us on the mission. Sweat stains from his 40-pound flak jacket are still evident on his uniform and he is smiling through exhaustion into the lens. He and his squad of Marines had been up for more than 24 hours chasing down an enemy sniper. His is one of more than two dozen Army, Marine, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard units whose tours will be extended in Iraq in order to increase U.S. troop levels by 21,500. These are the young Americans who will bear the brunt of what Congress is doing.
Sgt. Frazier is one of more than 2,500 U.S. military personnel killed in action in Iraq. Speaker Nancy Pelosi claims the resolution being debated by the House of Representatives is a measure that "will continue to support and protect" U.S. military personnel. Yet, she also says it shows "Congress disapproves of the decision of President George W. Bush announced on Jan. 10, 2007, to deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to Iraq." How this does anything but damage U.S. and Iraqi morale and embolden America's adversaries is beyond comprehension.
"The American people have lost faith in President Bush's course of action in Iraq," Pelosi said Tuesday as the resolution was introduced. She said the president's plan "is based on the judgment that the way out of Iraq lies in sending more troops in," adding, "our experience has proven just the opposite."
At the risk of pointing out the obvious, "our experience," in Pelosi's words, has proven that pulling U.S. forces out before the war is won is a formula for disaster. In Korea, the decision to withdraw U.N. troops to the 38th parallel resulted in stalemate and today's despotic, nuclear-armed regime in Pyongyang. In Vietnam, the congressional cut-off of funds in December 1974 precipitated the North Vietnamese communist takeover of the entire country less than five months later. The combined losses in both wars -- more than 108,000 Americans killed in action -- should be an object lesson for this Congress. Pulling out, holding back, withdrawing support, "de-funding" the war -- whatever it's called -- is tantamount to squandering lives.
Is that where this Congress is heading? Are the lives of courageous young American volunteers like Joshua Frazier worth so little to our Congress that they would ignore our peril for perverse personal political profit?
If the morale of America's soldiers, sailors, airmen, Guardsmen and Marines doesn't have meaning to our legislators, then perhaps they should look at what America's enemies are doing. While Congress debates hollow, but ultimately damaging legislation, there is new assertiveness in Iran -- on everything from acquiring nuclear arms to supplying terror cells in Iraq with advanced weaponry. Tehran's radical Islamic theocracy headed by Grand Ayatollah Khamenei doesn't have to worry about "resolutions of non-support," but they are very adept at measuring American ambivalence and uncertainty.
This week's "show and tell" of captured Iranian sniper rifles, surface-to-air missiles, mortar rounds, sophisticated "explosively formed penetrators" and evidence of Iranian complicity in killing more than 170 Americans elicited nary a peep from the new Congressional leadership. They were more concerned with their pet resolution -- and getting Pelosi a bigger military airplane for her commute between Washington and San Francisco. That's a telling signal to Tehran that our Congress is backing away from protecting our vital interests and our troops.
Nero fiddled as Rome burned. Today, Congress diddles as Americans die. Tomorrow, we may all pay the price.
We dont have a Congress we have a determined group of people with stated intentions of selling us out to gain political power.
Selling us out in Iraq
Selling us out to Mexican illegals
Selling us out to Envirowhacko's
They don't care. This is all about taking down GWB at any and all costs. If they take the WH the story would start to change but only where the US military would be sent in under the direction of the UN or where we needed to enforce gay marriage or other liberal social agendas.
They are the most gutless, spineless, feckless, unprincipled group of elected representatives I have ever seen.
I am increasingly convinced that overwhelming military action is the right solution to this problem - in Washington, D.C.
Are you calling for the overthrow of our own government?
Didn't one of the founding fathers say something to the effect of "occasional rebellion is a necessary part of democracy." I know I'm paraphrasing and simplifying, but I'm too lazy to find the exact quote at this point.
THEY SUPPORT THE TROOPS OF AL QAEDA!
re: Are you calling for the overthrow of our own government?
I don't know about the person of whom you ask this question, but speaking for myself, yes I am calling for an overthrow of our own government. We are once again suffering from the very problems sited in the Declaration of Independence as the justification for kicking out the Crown. Read them for yourself.
I would prefer the overthrow happen as the result of elections in which Americans show they've had enough, but no less an authority than Abraham Lincoln acknowledged that it's the right, in fact the duty, of a people to rid themselves of bad government even if it means bloodshed.
At some point we aren't going to have to worry about it any longer, the Islamofascists will launch an attack with WMD that will render us all but overthrown. The question is just about to become simply whether we do it ourselves or wait for our enemies to do it to us.
At the risk of boring everyone who's seen me post them time and again, here are some words from Abraham Lincoln, spoken over 130 years ago, but more important today than since the day he spoke them:
"This government must be preserved in spite of the acts of any man or set of men. Nowhere in the world is presented a government of so much liberty and equality. To the humblest and poorest among us are held the highest privileges and positions.
What constitutes the bulwark of our liberty and independence? It is not the frowning battlements, or bristling seacoast, our army and navy. These are not our reliance against tyranny. Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in us. Our defense is in the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism at your own doors.
At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow?
Never. All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined could not, by force, take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge.
At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up among us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we ourselves, must be its author and its finisher. As a nation of free men, we must live through all time . . . or die by suicide.
Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite to exist only for a day. No . . . No . . . Man was made for immortality."
Pretty sobering words for a man who has been dead for over a century, but knew what he was talking about and walked the walk!
When zou overthrow the govt. what are you going to replace it with? What do you do with the President?
Make that 2.
Bump
ping
Who are these people in Congress? I don't think we know anymore. They do not act in the best interest of the American people. So they must not be Americans. They do not speak for me. None of them. I DO question their patriotism, and I am sick of these traitors asking that question, when it is obvious they are in no way patriots.
Are you planning on coming to DC on March 17th? I'll be there to support our troops against the anti-war crowd. Everybody is always up in arms about how horrible our government is but don't go any farther than their keyboard. I know that we all have jobs and families, but what sacrifice have we made? I've sent money, care packages, phone cards etc. But that was just a monetary sacrifice. I want a chance to pit myself against the anti-war, anti-American crowd. My son went with me once to keep me from getting into trouble, he's deployed this time so I'm going stag.
20 years from now and all through history, people will look at what was done today and spit on the democrats. Nobody will ever admit to voting for a democrat EVER. The name of Pelosi, Murtha, Reid, and Durbin will be the equal of Benedict Arnold, Tokyo Rose and Lord Haw Haw. Craven Coward will be written after their names whenever they are written.
The majority of the House of Representatives is choosing the latter.
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