One Citizen's Response
By Bob Parks (01/30/07)
The following is a citizen's response to the President's State of the Union address and the Democrat response. This response is to the Men and Women of the United States Armed Forces.
With all the political events of the past week, I was going to issue you an apology. Seeing how the people of whom I would be apologizing for are self-centered, self-righteous, better-than-anyone citizens of our great nation, let it suffice to say I am more disgusted than anything else.
I can’t even come close to knowing what you must be going through in Iraq and Afghanistan. During the mid-to-late eighties, I served onboard the USS Midway, at that time the only forward-deployed carrier in the fleet. Her nickname was the “USS Never Dock.” Our average deployment was nine months out of the year.
Our bright spot was that we would soon be going home. Unfortunately, you on the ground are not guaranteed a plane ride home, and with that comes my disgust for those who don’t think twice about playing games with your lives, not knowing what life is really like in theater while wearing your uniform.
It’s the little things the anti-war left and their media do on an almost daily basis that pisses me off. For example, the liberals in this country routinely remind us all how many of you have died serving your country. Every new big number warrants a new story and fancy graphics. The left proudly displays that number on the sides of their homes and on billboards.
Will anyone in the media tell me how many of the enemy you’ve killed? When is CBS, NBC, ABC, and CNN going to give us that number, complete with fanfare? As the object of most wars is to win, and the easy way of judging success is in the body count of our enemy, why haven’t we heard this number? Are we even going to?
Considering the side the kills the most has the easier path to victory, how can Democrats say we’re losing without telling us what the score is? Are YOU really losing? How many times have you had to retreat during a battle? Why are we at home being told you’re not able to get the job done?
The Democrats considered their recent electoral victory a referendum on the war that they say you are losing. They consider your actions futile and we need to bring you home now. You know what’s going on over there. Some who’ve visited you say that we’re not hearing the whole story; your many successes, and hearing about the people in Iraq whose lives you’ve touched by your very liberation.
Thus my disgust for people who think so less of you and your potential, that they want to bring you home like some little kid picked on by a school bully. The only difference here is that today’s bully will leave a bomb in your house if he’s not left in the schoolyard with a blood nose.
I’m personally disgusted by those who take for granted the fact that most of you not only joined the military, but most chose to join your branch. Some chose to work in the air, at sea, or on the ground. You knew where you’d be going, and some have even chosen to go back.
There are some here who take all that is life for granted while taking their spoiled, screaming kids to Chuck E. Cheese. They go with the comfort of knowing that a roadside bomb won’t go off in the parking lot. There are some that take their freedom for granted, as they know a crackpot won’t detonate himself and a pack of ball bearings inside the local mall. There are way too many in America who go through life thinking nothing bad will ever happen to them and your sacrifice is the last explanation that enters their narcissistic brains.
Many who went to work on September 11, 2001 sure as hell felt safe that morning. Will someone in the media tell me how many of the people who aided and supported the hijackers’ mission are dead today, never to return for an encore?
I support you. I’m not going to say, “I support the troops.” The word “troops” is impersonal and political. You have names and you chose a branch. I support the Men and Women of the United States Armed Forces. Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. As I’m not getting paid to write this, I am not using you. Many who are getting paid to play a part in a war YOU chose to fight are, and they want you dead. Should you all die, they can point their fingers in all of our faces and tell us they were right. It’s all about them.
I know that’s harsh and I’ll piss off those anti-war types. Like they have it bad. Would they have the guts to trade places with you, or stay at home and protest on streets you are keeping safe?
They now wish to pass some resolution in the Congress and the Senate that says they “support” you but believe you were sent to fight a war you cannot win. Because of some pansy-ass politicians on both sides of the aisle who are more concerned with their own power than your lives, they want no part of victory.
Should every one of you come home in a flag-draped coffin, they will declare it a victory. If you are victorious, they will be forever stained as cowards who not only devalued your efforts, but could give a damn of the sure slaughter of possibly millions of Iraqis that would occur upon your evacuation.
So Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her colleagues have decided to issue a timetable to the Iraqi government. Who does she think she is?
Does Speaker Pelosi and her Democrat brethren risk assassination by car bomb or semi-automatic machinegun fire on a daily basis? While travelling in Switzerland and calling America a social outcast, is my disgrace of a senator, John Kerry, supporting you or putting a bullseye on everyone one your heads?
Once you leave the region with the insurgency still intact, who will be sent in next to resolve the failed diplomacy, France?
You’re on the ground; let me ask you. Do you think the people shooting rocket-propelled grenades, and rigging bombs under dead bodies, are ready to sit down and talk with you? These people are willing to blow up their own children to defeat “The Great Satan.” So we should sit down and talk with them? You first, Senator Kerry.
Those who use you for their own political gain are below the elements that make up dirt. They recite and teach children to recite such nonsense as “Bush lied, people died.” They pound their chests while declaring you went to Iraq looking for weapons of mass destruction that were never there. I believe President Bush when he sent you to find them. It’s a shame that while the UN, distracted by Germany, France, and Russia, stalled in enforcing one of more than a dozen resolutions, the dearly departed Saddam Hussein probably hid them in Syria. It would seem Saddam knew how to play our liberals after all.
They claim that President Bush deliberately sent you into battle with inadequate training and equipment.
Wars were historically fought on battlefields. Wars were historically fought between nations in uniform. This battle, as you know, is different.
You are fighting representatives from many nations who wear no distinguishable clothing, and shoot at you not on a battlefield, but in cities, in homes behind woman and children. If you were initially prepared to fight this kind of war, the left would have called you savages.
Our greatest impediment is our politicians and their media’s willingness to alert our enemy to your every move, including reinforcements. They revel in their self-importance and in their arrogance forget the enemy watches ESPN and CNN. Have you seen enemy media declaring they are losing, while it’s probably the truth? Have we seen their leaders forced to state to their nation what the next strategy would be?
Whenever you see another Democrat tell you that you’re there because our Commander-in-Chief lied about the existance, thus the initial mission to find and destroy Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, remember this….
“One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line.”
* President Bill Clinton, February 4, 1998
Two weeks later Clinton added….
“If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program.”
And remember this….
“Iraq is a long way from here, but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face.”
* Secretary of State Madeline Albright, February 18, 1998
And this….
“He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983.”
* National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, February 18, 1998, referring to Saddam Hussein
And this….
“We urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq’s refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs.”
* Democrat senators Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John F. Kerry, and others in a letter to President Clinton on October 9, 1998
And finally….
“Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process. The responsibility of the United States in this conflict is to eliminate weapons of mass destruction, to minimize the danger to our troops and to diminish the suffering of the Iraqi people.”
* Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, December 16, 1998
I included the dates as these statements were made years before George W. Bush was elected President of the United States. Most believed those weapons were there and said as much. They are lying now to a memory-challenged media who wants you to lose as much as the enemy.
Please do those of us who consider you more than a number a favor. Screw what the liberals are saying: you are not losing. Victory means not only liberating Iraq. You will liberate yourselves. You will free yourselves of people who are elitists. People who never knew self-sacrifice on the level you endure every day.
People who play soldiers in movies consider themselves experts in diplomacy, strategy, and actual warfare. As you well know, al Qaeda is not shooting blanks and reading a script. While this is real for you, some in the safety back home lament their daily routines, thus they hold up signs and listen to the wisdom of Tim Robbins and Jane Fonda. Unfortunately this war will never be over until you kill enough of the enemy there and shame those who use you here.
Does that make me a warmonger?
No. I am a veteran, a citizen of the United States of America, and I want you to win this war and come home. That’s as it should be, right?
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