Pouring Fuel On the Fire
By Steve Farrell (10/06/04)
I’m a political independent; and I don’t hide the fact that I don’t always agree with President Bush on every issue—issues like Compassionate Conservatism, or the FTAA, and well, about working with the U.N., period.
But I do give some credit to President Bush; I think he’s a sincere man who loves his country; and I believe he’s done some positive things, things like taking the battle to the terrorists on their ground rather than ours, letting Clinton’s federal police program expire, standing tall against abortion and gay marriage, being true to allies like Israel, and thumbing his nose at the U.N. when the U.N. refuses to stand by us.
Senator Kerry, on the other hand, is a different kind of character.
His message is negative. Even when he attempts to be positive, to supposedly not be the same man who as a youth exploited a war for medals, only to flip flop and throw his medals away, and accuse his fellow men in arms of atrocities they didn’t commit (ignoring the real atrocity of communism)—that is, even when he attempts to be more positive and patriotic than his record seems to indicate, he can’t help himself from siding with the bad guys, the terrorists of the world, as if to pour fuel on the flames of hatred for America.
Forget what the media is spinning. Kerry lost the debate because he, once again, lost our trust.
President Bush brought up a valid question when he asked: “I don’t see how you can lead the country to succeed in Iraq if you say wrong war, wrong time, wrong place. What message does that send our troops? What message does that send to our allies? What message does that send the Iraqis?”
What’s wrong with that? This was fair game. We’ve all heard Kerry say it. We all wanted to know his answer. The question was valid and to the point. Our troops are there, like it or not, fighting for their very lives, fighting for the freedom of Iraq. Is this the time for mixed messages?
Mr. Kerry responded, “Yes, we have to be steadfast and resolved, and I am. And I will succeed for those troops, now that we're there. We have to succeed. We can't leave a failed Iraq.”
Good answer. President Bush pressed the point repeatedly, however, and for good cause. Because, try as Senator Kerry would to convince his audience that “I believe we have to win this. The President and I have always agreed on that. … [And] I am determined for those soldiers and for those families, for those kids who put their lives on the line”, yet the Senator couldn’t help himself from flip-flopping to reveal a dark side to his feeling.
Bush heard it; he wasn’t oblivious to it.
Senator Kerry spoke of our invasion, rather than our liberation of Iraq, six times. He spoke of our occupation of Iraq, rather than our reconstruction efforts, twice. He spoke of our lust after the oil of Iraq (as if we were robber barons), rather than the fact that we have poured billions into Iraq’s economy, thrice.
A few samples:
“Invading Iraq in response to 9/11 would be like Franklin Roosevelt invading Mexico in response to Pearl Harbor. That's what we have here.”
Invaders, not liberators. I suppose Senator Kerry, in his ‘brilliant’ effort to paint the U.S. as the imperialist bad guy, forgot that we turned to Hitler’s Germany, not first to Japan, after Pearl Harbor. Were we invaders or liberators of the German nation which didn’t attack us at Pearl Harbor? Was Germany better off, or worse off because of our efforts? And is Saddam Hussein’s militant and genocidal Iraqi military seriously to be compared with Mexico’s, rather than Nazi Germany’s?
Next:
“You know, the president's father did not go into Iraq, into Baghdad, beyond Basra. And the reason he didn't is, he said—he wrote in his book—because there was no viable exit strategy. And he said our troops would be occupiers in a bitterly hostile land.
“That's exactly where we find ourselves today. There's a sense of American occupation.”
And again, later on: “As I understand it, we're building some 14 military bases there now, and some people say they've got a rather permanent concept to them.”
Occupiers, not rebuilders. Just what our troops need to be thought of when surrounded by terrorists, proof, that even their own President (if elected) believes that they are despicable occupiers! No mention of the power plants we’ve built, the wells we’ve dug, the schools we’ve resurrected, the police and military force we’ve trained, the representative government we’re setting up.
Next:
“The only building that was guarded when the troops when into Baghdad was the oil ministry. We didn't guard the nuclear facilities. We didn’t guard the foreign office, where we might have found information about weapons of mass destruction. We didn’t guard the borders.”
And again,
“When you guard the oil ministry, but you don't guard the nuclear facilities, the message to a lot of people is maybe, "Wow, maybe they're interested in our oil."
And again,
“He save[d] for Halliburton the spoils of the war.”
This is the man who wants to be Commander in Chief—a vast right wing conspiracy theorist? The terrorists must be rejoicing. You can bet they will replay and reprint Senator Kerry’s sound bites and words in terrorist recruiting camps, in the Arab press, and to hostages and POWs;—just like Mr. Kerry’s words were once played to inflame passions among the communists and to deflate moral among POWs at the Hanoi Hilton, three decades ago.
What won’t be played, on the oil issue, is that we’ve been subsidizing gasoline there, so that the people of Iraq can buy it at a penny a gallon, and that Saddam burned the wells last time around.
We are truly the villains, aren’t we?
Some things never change. Mr. Kerry with a suit and a hint of gray still sounds the same. He hasn’t changed. However, we can only hope that those Democrats and Independents among us, who were spun into believing that Kerry won, will upon second thought change, change their mind again.
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