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Month May 2009

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Family Ties

May 30, 09 10:22 PM

Seeing some of the things I’ve seen, I will never understand how so many judges come to the conclusion that all attempts must be made to keep kids with their biological parents.

When I was a freshman in high school, my family lived next door to a soldier who had a wife he’d met in Germany and four adopted kids. This family was generally very nice, but living next door to them, we learned quite a lot. Mom and dad believed that any consumption of any food that contained sugar or preservatives was a sin, and were able to quote passages from the bible that they felt justified their position. What made this so strange was that they would not allow their kids to eat anything not made in their home. I kid you not, these children were not allowed to eat anything at anyone else’s home, at church, or at school. They were frequently sent to school without lunches. I babysat them twice, and on both occasions every one of those kids displayed an amazing fear of their parents. Another neighbor was a teacher at their school, and she found all three of the school-aged kids with bruises that belied physical abuse.

Those kids were never removed from the home. The last I heard, dad had been transferred to another duty station and nothing had been done.

Fast forward to my adult years, and I became a youth corrections officer. I learned something very quickly there: many of the kids had parents who were either drug-abusing pieces of trash who had abused their kids (and in that group, the vast majority were single parents). There were boys in the facility I worked in who didn’t like to have anyone behind them because they’d been continually molested as small children. There were both boys and girls in other facilities whose parents would show up on visitation day either drunk or high (or both), even some who would smuggle narcotics in to the kids. One kid had learned to make hooch from his prison-bound father in a letter and had become quite proficient in making it himself. In many of these cases, if you looked deeper into a kids’ past you’d find that a judge somewhere had continued to insist on sending the kids home with mom or dad despite many incidents that proved the parents to be incapable of raising their kids.

I worked for a couple of different shelters after that and saw six-year-olds insisting on being called Tupac or Snoop Dogg, heard kids too young to understand profanity using some of the most creative curses I’d ever heard, and seeing other kids performing mock sex acts all the time because of the things they’d been exposed to. Those cases were especially difficult, because I knew most of these kids were going to eventually go home to the parents who damaged them so severely. I knew that many of them would wind up in the juvenile detention facilities that I’d worked in previously, and there was absolutely nothing that a peon like me could do about it.

Holding my niece, playing with her, and seeing her face light up when my brother or sister-in-law would smile at her gave me pause to wonder how in the hell any living, breathing, feeling human being could possibly cause so much harm to such a small, defenseless person. I sat down to play my guitar for Delaney and she just sat and listened; it was the only time she was so still and calm while she was awake. She learned to clap when I walked into the room after hearing her mom and dad clap when I got done playing. She isn’t a perfect kid, but she’s beautiful and an absolute joy to all of us. I cannot fathom any person wishing harm to something so innocent.

For some reason, the law largely sides with biological family in all cases involving abuse, neglect or molestation. Judges seem to think it’s more important to keep a child with at least one biological parent than it is to keep them safe and sound. When a CPS worker stands up in court and explains to a judge that mom is a raging alcoholic at 19 and has been arrested for DUI three times with her two kids in the vehicle and the judge sees fit to return those kids to mom yet again, there’s a major problem. While human imperfection dictates that we’ll never cure ourselves of the festering plague of child abusers any more than we will of any other criminal, we can at least make an attempt to stand up for the smallest and most innocent of all victims. Sometimes it seems it will never change.

Family ties should never be more important than what’s best for a child.

Comments (7)

Greater Love Has No One Than This

May 25, 09 12:15 PM

On June 28, 2005, the members of US Navy SEAL team 10 were sent on a reconnaissance mission in the mountains of Afghanistan in the Hindu Kush. Mike Murphy, Danny Deitz, Matt Axelson and Marcus Luttrell were following a known Taliban terrorist to gain intel; they were hidden just off a mountain path when, out of nowhere, three goatherders came up the path and nearly stepped on one of the men. Out of necessity, the SEALs detained the goatherders and discussed their options.

The options were slim. They knew by the way the Afghanis were looking at them and interacting with them that the instant they let them go, they’d tell the Taliban where to find them and they’d be dead. But the other half of the conversation was even more disgusting: these highly-trained SEALs were more afraid of the press than they were of the Taliban. They knew that if they didn’t kill the goatherders right then, right there on that mountain, Taliban fighters would swarm the area and snuff them out. If they did kill the three Afghanis, however, they would be castigated by the liberal media back home–and, in the words of Lt. Mike Murphy, “we’ll be tried for murder shortly thereafter.” A situation that would have been a no-brainer during WWII became a political quagmire on the side of a mountain in Afghanistan.

Lt. Murphy had a choice. He could kill the goatherders (effectively ending any threat of the Taliban knowing they were there), save his men, and complete his mission, providing valuable intel on a major Taliban leader. Or, he could give more importance to the political aspect, let the goatherders go alive, and face almost certain death to protect their reputations from the ravages of the press.

They were more afraid of the press in the country they were fighting to protect than they were of the enemy that threatened to kill them.

Anybody who paid attention to the news at the time knows what the outcome was. They released the goatherders, and within minutes they were set upon by hundreds of Taliban soldiers. They fought like hell, like the SEALs they were, and in the middle of the fight Lt. Murphy took the radio from a badly wounded Danny Dietz with no regard for his own safety and moved to an open location to radio for help. This single act resulted in Murphy being mortally wounded. Lt. Murphy, Danny Dietz and Matt Axelson died on the mountain that day, and 16 more–including four of their fellow SEALs and eight Army Night Stalkers sent to rescue them–were killed when their Chinook helicopter was shot down by the Taliban.

Marcus Luttrell was the single survivor of the battle. With cracked vertebrae, gunshot wounds and shrapnel in both legs Luttrell managed to drag himself seven miles before a group of Afghani villagers took him in and cared for him until the village elder could get a message to US forces. He was rescued on July 3, days after the battle, having been fiercely protected by the Afghani villagers who took pity on him.

It is a travesty that the bravest of all of us should have more fear for their own countrymen than they should of the murderous enemy. Each one of them knew what they were doing. They knew what they were fighting for, and they willingly paid the ultimate sacrifice to protect our freedoms. Lt. Michael P. Murphy was awarded the Medal of Honor in 2007 for his courageous act to protect his men, made necessary by the political correctness that pervades our culture. Given any circumstances, though, he’d have done no different. Nor would any of the men who gave their lives that day, including the four SEAL teammates who were the first to board the chopper to help them.

Any American who does not understand the significance of Memorial Day should be ashamed of themselves. I have met more than a couple. Today is a day to remember the sacrifices of the men and women who have fought, bled and died for our freedom. We should never forget. And any person who feels it necessary to demean those who still fight to the point that they would put these heroes in danger should feel suicidally guilty. There should never be any reason for our heroes to fear any of us more than they fear our enemies. I wonder how the reporters who break these half-baked “stories” sleep at night.

“Greater love has no one than this: that he would lay down his life for his friends.” –John 15:13

Comments (3)

“And Tango Makes Three”

May 22, 09 2:13 PM

That’s the title of a children’s book that’s not really suited for children. I’m about to really raise the ire of gay rights advocates, because I am about to say very publicly that I disagree wholeheartedly with indoctrinating children with gay-rights lessons. The California state education board is batting around the idea of presenting a curriculum that includes this book. Gay-rights advocates are jumping for joy that it’s being considered.

My cousins in Texas, between them, have four young kids. I have one niece through my brother (just turned nine months old). I’ve worked with kids in shelters, and I see kids regularly at one of my jobs. I’ve learned through my experiences that kids act differently when adults treat something differently: whether we’re tiptoeing around an issue or we’re arguing about it, they’ll pick up on that difference and treat it differently, too. Kids are very, very sensitive to that sort of thing.

One of my dad’s older cousins, Mary, is also a lesbian and she and her partner of 20+ years, Sharon, live on a small horse ranch in Houston. The kids know Mary and Sharon; they don’t ask questions about why they’re together, they just know that they’re Mary and Sharon. We don’t make a big deal and the kids see it as perfectly normal. If we were to try to sit the kids down and have “the talk” with them about why Mary and Sharon are always together, it would be different–and the kids likely wouldn’t understand it.

“And Tango Makes Three” is a book geared towards kids about two gay penguins struggling to make a family. Another theme of the book is bullying, and the book is billed as a bullying tool. It is anything BUT a bullying tool, however. A bigger deal is made about the fact that two male penguins want to raise a chick together and many other penguins disapprove.

This sort of thing is nothing new to elementary-age kids; “Am I Blue” and “Heather Has Two Mommies” preceeded “Tango.” If the State of California were making this education optional, it would be one thing. The problem I have is that the state’s board of education is voting to make it absolutely mandatory for kindergarten-aged kids.

MANDATORY. Seriously. What’s more, fifth-graders will be required to study “sexual stereotypes.”

Nobody in the government has any business telling a parent what to teach their kids. You know what? That guy on the East Coast who named his son Adolf? He had a right to do that. We may think he’s not the quickest bunny in the forest, but it doesn’t give us the right to tell him he can’t do that. If parents want to teach their kids that homosexuality is wrong, that is their right, as much as we may dislike it. Now, if that child turns around and calls a classmate a fag, then the teacher can take disciplinary action to make clear that name-calling and bullying are unacceptable. You can create the tools to stop bullying in schools without resorting to forcing kids to sit through a lesson that they won’t understand (and their parents to counter those lessons at home).

When even agnostic parents are complaining that some teachers are crossing the line with their anti-Christian bent, there’s a problem. One parent in SoCal complained about a History teacher who had indoctrinated her daughter to believe that all Christians were backwards, horrible people and that all conservatives were hatemongers. She said her daughter was nearly insufferable in her hatred of these two groups because of this teacher. When did this become acceptable? When did it become okay to force an entire population to meekly agree with the out-and-out brainwashing of their youth? And if the gay community is so against allowing Christian students to display their beliefs about homosexuality in public schools, then how can we dare try to force them to accept what we believe?

It’s not right. It’s not just to tell one group they aren’t allowed to teach their kids according to their beliefs while we teach them according to ours. In the case of “Tango,” we’re forcing something on kids that they are far too young to grasp.

Comments (6)

Trust Us!

May 21, 09 2:02 PM

I have to point out a lot of things happening that the MSM won’t touch for the most part (CNN has had a few blips on their webpage, but FOX is pretty much the only one pointing all of this out aside from local rags). Even I didn’t think some of the things I’m reading about could get this bad.

In a comment on my last post, I pointed out a very illegal act committed by the Obama administration. During negotiations for GM’s bankruptcy proceedings, Obama cut a deal with GM that upended bankruptcy law. GM agreed to give $0.50 on the dollar to union stockholding investors; the lenders, however, were only to get a mere $0.33 on the dollar, and the bondholders were to get right around the same (possibly a little less) if anything at all. Now, with a similar bankruptcy proceeding at Chrysler, Obama has tried to do a similar deal: $0.55 on the dollar to union stockholders and a paisley $0.23 on the dollar to bondholders and lenders. This flies in the face of every bankruptcy law on the books. Bondholders come before shareholders, and there’s different levels of bonds; in the Chrysler case, police officers and teachers whose pensions were wrapped up in those bonds were supposed to receive the highest return because they had put more in. Unions were to be on the bottom of the totem pole.

When these lenders and bondholders refused to agree to these deals, Obama threatened to castigate them in the press. Is this the “flinty Chicago toughness” Obama wanted to apply to DC?

Yesterday, a closed-door session was held by congressional Democrats seeking to raise taxes. What’s that again? RAISE taxes? I thought the little guy was supposed to get a break?!? Nope. In case you hadn’t noticed, Obama has already raised taxes on tobacco, in particular on cigarettes (I don’t smoke cigarettes, but my dad does; my pipe tobacco has gone up significantly in price thanks to those taxes). Now they want to raise the tax on beer by more than 200%–ostensibly to pay for the upcoming universal healthcare. Hard liquor, particularly the expensive stuff, will hardly see a rise in taxes (who is Obama looking out for now?), and wine will see a significant rise as well.

NOT ONLY IS HE RAISING ALCOHOL TAXES TO PAY FOR HIS HEALTHCARE PLAN, he wants to tax the pants off of businesses and employees who have good healthcare benefits. So because I worked hard, got an education, and now work for a company that cares enough to help provide good health insurance, my taxes will go up and my company will pay more as well. Which means that eventually my benefits will go away because neither I nor my company will be able to pay for them.

This would force a synthetic need for the government system.

The One claims that our current system is “slowing” our economy at a bad time. Really? How? I have benefits because I worked to get a job that would provide them with a company that cares. I had neither a better or worse chance than anyone else to better my life; I knew I needed to provide for myself and the family I want in the future, and that’s what I’m doing. Why should I pay for everyone else who chose to skate through life and depend on others to take care of them?

In Japan last year, a bicyclist hit by a car died needlessly waiting for care. It wasn’t a lack of paramedics. The medics arrived within seconds of the first call for help, actually. It took an hour for the medics to locate a hospital willing to take the man, and what we in the EMS field call the “golden hour” was wasted trying to find a facility to treat a very treatable patient. Japan has a system much like what Obama wishes to implement. Cancer patients and those in need of organ transplants are assessed for their “quality of life” in these systems…if they don’t have a good chance of surviving, guess what? They’re not treated. Why waste the money treating a patient who isn’t going to survive? That’s the way universal healthcare works, no matter how Obama puts it to you. My grandmother and great-grandmother received top-notch treatment for their illnesses despite their grim prognoses because our system the way it is can support it.

The government is talking about taxing all junk foods, sodas and alcoholic beverages that contain yeast because they contribute to unhealthy lifestyles. I’m sorry, but if you have the money and it’s legal to consume, the government has no business penalizing you for your choices. That’s not the hallmark of a free society.

We wanted change. We had to have it, no matter what. Now we’ve got it. And Obama and the Democrats patronized us by saying, “trust us! We know better than you, we can make your lives happier!”

Oh, and I can’t help but chortle at another bit of fantastic news: House Democrats have struck down a Republican effort to create a bipartisan panel to investigate Nancy Pelosi’s claims that the CIA lied. So much for promises of transparency.

Comments (29)

Trying Times

May 19, 09 2:08 PM

Contrary to what the Democrats would have us all believe, things are getting worse. Stocks continue to drop. Unemployment hasn’t improved–in fact, it’s gotten worse (saving 150,000 jobs as opposed to losing 1.6 million? Please!). One of the stalwarts of the international lending industry, American Express, seemingly impervious to the economic hardships, announced layoffs for the first time today. And Obama, despite many reports that say it’s a bad idea, has announced a new government requirement of 35.5 MPG on all new vehicles by the year 2016.

Do we really still think Obama’s doing a good job?

We’re talking about a guy who believed that spreading the wealth was a great idea. He has all but wrested control of the banking industry from the owners, even in cases where the banks involved did a fantastic job doing the right thing while all the others were helping toss our economy down the crapper. Since when does a free country allow the government to decide what they do with their money? When did being free mean that the government decides what’s best for our vehicles? Did Obama even read the reports that show smaller vehicles account for the highest death rates on the roads?

What’s even more galling is that any liberal can still think that Obama was really just raising taxes on the rich in light of another recent development: a new $1300 tax on all new vehicles. That’s not going to hurt the rich, folks. That will be for every new vehicle, regardless of your income. Still think he’s really only raising taxes on the rich? He says we’ll make that back in three years in savings on gas, but shouldn’t we be saving PERIOD? Why should we replace a savings with another expenditure? Why do we need the new taxes?

Oh, yeah…I forgot. The Generational Theft Act of 2009, a.k.a. the “stimulus.” We gotta pay that back somehow. Aside from inflation, taxing one of the things we rely on the most is the best way to recoup those funds.

These are trying times, folks, make no mistake. Obama is NOT our messiah. And considering his gaffe-machine VP (who seems to have completely digested both feet and is working his way up to his knees now) can’t keep his mouth shut, I don’t think we can get these idiots out of office quickly enough.

Comments (32)

Hypocrisy Always Swings to the Left

May 15, 09 11:26 AM

Thanks to Ann Coulter and the WSJ, this little tidbit has been displayed for Americans to read with regard to Obama’s appearance at Notre Dame.  Enjoy!  Courtesy of anncoulter.com

EXPERT ON DEMONIZATION CONDEMNS DEMONIZATION – From James Taranto in the WSJ:

The [Boston] Globe notes that not all Catholics are unhappy with Notre Dame’s plan to give the president an honorary degree:

“There are some well-meaning people who think Notre Dame has given away its Catholic identity, because they have been caught up in the gamesmanship of American higher education, bringing in a star commencement speaker even if that means sacrificing their values, and that accounts for some of this,” said the Rev. Kenneth Himes, chairman of theology department at Boston College.

“But one also has to say that there is a political game going on here, and part of that is that you demonize the people who disagree with you, you question their integrity, you challenge their character, and you brand these people as moral poison. Some people have simply reduced Catholicism to the abortion issue, and, consequently, they have simply launched a crusade to bar anything from Catholic institutions that smacks of any sort of open conversation.”

Now read this 2006 Associated Press dispatch: Nearly 100 faculty members at Boston College have signed a letter objecting to the college’s decision to award Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice an honorary degree. The letter entitled “Condoleezza Rice Does Not Deserve a Boston College Honorary Degree,” was written by the Rev. Kenneth Himes. . . .

“On the levels of both moral principle and practical moral judgment, Secretary Rice’s approach to international affairs is in fundamental conflict with Boston College’s commitment to the values of the Catholic and Jesuit traditions and is inconsistent with the humanistic values that inspire the university’s work,” the letter said.

Himes, it seems, is an expert on demonization.

Comments (21)

The Shoe is on The Other Foot

May 14, 09 9:41 PM

I had originally told Steve I was going to post about Carrie Prejean today, but I wanna save that for a vidblog. I have to do a quick post while I have time about a couple of things that are directly linked, both of which having to do with “enhanced interrogation techniques” and flip-flops. After agreeing to release photos taken of terror suspects being waterboarded during interrogation, Obama has now recanted on his promise. He’s suddenly decided that it would pose a grave threat to our troops to release the photos. I wonder if he thought about this BEFORE seeing them–or AFTER being warned by his military advisors that this was a no-no after all.

And Nasty Pelosi (er…ah…NANCY) suddenly decided a full week after her initial reaction to declare that the CIA lied to her about waterboarding. If you’ll recall, a week ago her spokesman reacted almost blankly to the CIA memos released that showed Pelosi was, in fact, informed in 2002 of the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques, saying merely that Pelosi had a “different recollection.” It took a week to get pissed off and start banging fists on the table. I don’t know ’bout ya’ll, but if it had been me, and I really didn’t know about it, I’d have been adamant about being left out of the loop from the get-go. It took the Pelosi camp an entire week to get indignant, claiming that the CIA lied about telling her that they were using specific techniques during interrogation.

Bit of a delayed reaction, don’t you think?

Now, as for Barkey’s flip-flop on the photos, I’m not upset that they’re not being released. I didn’t think they should be in the first place, any more than I thought Cheney should be calling for the release of classified CIA documents about the attacks that we managed to thwart. The war on terror isn’t over by a longshot. There are still many in the extremist Muslim world calling for America to be destroyed. Those photos and the documents that accompany them should, at least for now, remain classified. This is what a complete lack of executive experience does to you–you start making promises that you either can’t or should never keep. I promise that’s a concept that Sarah Palin understands, because she does (contrary to popular belief) have the executive experience that Obama doesn’t. Even suggesting that the photos be released was a bad idea, because he’s whet the appetite of the anti-war crowd and now the ACLU is going to tie up precious court resources trying to force Obama to publish them.

And Nancy…oh, Nancy. All of a sudden, the entire CIA and most of Congress is lying. They’re all out to get her. It’s all the fault of that vast right-wing conspiracy, too. I find it interesting that now Harry Reid and other Democrats aren’t so interested in this “truth commission” that everyone was calling for about these enhanced interrogation techniques. They’re all backtracking. Now that the cat’s out of the bag, they can’t claim that they didn’t know anything. If they didn’t agree with it back then, they could have spoken up and stopped it. They didn’t because everyone wanted to avoid the next 9/11. But now that the next disaster has been averted, and we don’t have any concrete reason for the EIT’s (at least none that can be unclassified), everyone’s up in arms about waterboarding–and the Democrats are singing “plausible deniability” in their best operatic vibrato.

I seem to recall Democrats flaying Reagan for saying “I don’t recall.” The shoe is now on the other foot. I hope it blisters like hell.

Comments (12)

Winter Soldier Syndrome

May 13, 09 11:52 PM

More than one reader has suggested that I go to a website hosted by Iraq Veterans Against the War to read about the “reality” of the Iraq war. It actually started before I joined Steve and Philip here on www.gayconservative.org last year–people began emailing me on MySpace and telling me to read IVAW articles and quit talking about what I don’t understand. At least one was a person I knew; he had served in the Marines, but his boots never left U.S. soil. Others quoted names such as Jessie MacBeth and Josh Lansdale and suggested that I was fabricating knowing several people who had served and believed in their mission.

What’s hilarious to me now is that every single name quoted to me by those folks has been debunked as a fraud. And the list of said frauds continues to grow as time wears on. Let’s start at the beginning:

Shortly before the Iraq invasion, comic book author Micah Wright published a book called You Back the Attack, We’ll Bomb Who We Want! In it he claimed to be a former Army Ranger who’d served in Operation Just Cause (the 1989 invasion of Panama meant to depose drug lord and Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega) and had been forever changed by war. He was exposed as a fraud by Richard Leiby in the Washington Post and later recanted his story, resulting in his publishers dropping his material before his contract was set to expire.

Jimmy Massey claimed that, during his service as a Marine in Iraq, he and his comrades committed heinous atrocities. Among them were that his unit had fired on unarmed, peaceful Iraqi protesters, American Marines had shot a 4-year-old Iraqi girl in the head, and that at one point, his unit had killed so many civilians that they had to call in a tractor-trailer rig to carry the bodies away. He went on a speaking tour with Cindy Sheehan to warn parents of the evils of military recruiters and wrote a book called Kill, Kill, Kill that was a big hit in France. The Associated Press took Massey’s claims and ran with them, trumpeting them from every media outlet that would carry the story. They never checked their facts: they had a reporter, Ravi Nessman, embedded with Massey’s unit, and Nessman wrote in excess of 30 pieces about the unit’s activities. Nessman was never consulted, nor were the Marines ever asked to respond to the story before it was published as the gospel truth. To this day, however, he maintains a website where he peddles his lies and they are swallowed whole.

Jessie MacBeth was once the darling posterboy of IVAW. He claimed to be an Army Ranger who served in Iraq and, like Massey, claimed he had either carried out or witnessed unspeakable acts of horror on innocent civilians in Iraq. He even posted a picture of himself in uniform with a flag backdrop. But as soon as the picture was released, real Rangers were all over MacBeth like flies on a cowpie. His beret was worn backwards, his BDU undershirt was the wrong color, his sleeves were rolled up (Rangers don’t do that), and his unshaven face was completely outside of Army regulations. A tiny bit of digging turned up MacBeth’s form DD-214 (his record of honorable discharge): he served from January to June, 2003, and never left basic training. He certainly never went to Ranger school or Iraq. To be fair, IVAW later began requiring proof of service and no longer endorses MacBeth.

Josh Lansdale, through Wesley Clark’s VoteVets organization, spoke up on behalf of vets by claiming that the Bush administration’s slashing of VA benefits left him unable to access care for his severe PTSD and “busted ankle” (as he put it) for six months. A VA spokesman raised the first red flag when he said that a soldier such as Lansdale would have been bumped to the top of the list and would have been treated within less than 30 days. Clark’s VoteVets group featured Lansdale in an ad designed to smear the Republican incumbent Clark was running against and claimed that soldiers were being sent to Iraq with “Vietnam-era body armor” (a patent lie). Lansdale disappeared shortly after the ad aired; his 1Sgt, Gary Kuehn, spoke about Lansdale’s claims after he retired and shot down every single one. He even pointed out that Lansdale’s busted ankle came from playing volleyball.

Scott Thomas Beauchamp wrote Shock Troops, a diary series, in The New Republic. In it he claimed that he had taken part in ridiculing a woman disfigured by an IED blast, laughed at a fellow soldier as he supposedly marched around with the skull of an Iraqi child, and helped another soldier use a Bradley vehicle to run over dogs. It was the claims of jerking the Bradley “hard to the right” to run over a dog that caught the attention of several reporters; a Bradley is a big, bulky vehicle incapable of sharp turns. Beauchamp later recanted, admitting that he had hoped that his time in the war would earn him credibility as a writer–after claiming “absolute moral authority” on the grounds of simply being a soldier.

Last but not least, today Michelle Malkin and This Ain’t Hell have exposed another fraudster used by the anti-war crowd to push their agenda. Rick Duncan claimed to be a former Marine. He claimed he survived the attack at the Pentagon on 9/11 and later served three tours in Iraq with the Marines. He claimed to have been a Marine Captain and said he’d graduated the US Naval Academy at Annapolis. He also claimed that during his third tour in Iraq, he was badly injured in an IED attack that killed four Marines and left him with a plate in his skull and blew off a finger (which was miraculously reattached). This week, members of the Colorado Veterans Alliance–a group that “Duncan” founded–discovered that he was actually Richard Glen Strandlof, and he’d actually been a patient in a mental hospital in Nevada during the time he supposedly survived the IED in Fallujah. He’s now in custody and is being investigated by the FBI for stealing money from the coffers of the CVA.

I can’t remember the last time I heard such a fable being fabricated by someone who supports the war.

Media fact-checking faux pas aside, the IVAW, Winter Soldier, VoteVets and other similar organizations have put people just like this up on their pedestals to speak for them before confirming the veracity of their claims. Not only is it damning to our country, but such fairy tales demean the thousands upon thousands who have served honorably (and the many who have bled and died) in the war, having never witnessed or committed any atrocity like the ones claimed by these charlatans. Winter Soldier began with a political wannabe named John Kerry and his cohorts lying to Congress about witnessing similar atrocities in Vietnam. Winter Soldier Syndrome lives on today.

Comments (3)

We Can’t Have it Both Ways

May 11, 09 11:03 PM

I’ve been noticing over the past few years that American society is not only fickle, but impossible to please. It seems that the majority of those living in my country (legally or illegally) amount to little more than a mob with a short fuse and an even lower IQ. It’s very frustrating to me, particularly when someone tries to shout me down after begging me to debate an issue with them, be it the war, 9/11 conspiracy theories, religion, immigration–you name it.

It all leads to one problem: we subconsciously wish we could have everything both ways.

We can’t, yet that’s exactly what we want. During Clinton’s presidency, we were attacked multiple times by radical Muslims bent on destroying America. Each time, Clinton tucked tail and ran, apologizing as he went. And each time he did that, the attacks became more brazen, leading up to the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000. But the big finale would come on 9/11, when 19 murderers carried out plans they’d been making for years and managed to do more damage and cause more carnage than all of their predecessors combined.

After it happened, everyone bitched about the government’s lack of response. Where was that anger when we were attacked in Mogadishu? Or when the Khobar Towers were bombed? Or when our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were all but vaporized? Or when the Cole was attacked? Nobody demanded to know why Bill Clinton hadn’t done anything to stop those attacks. Clinton had plenty of opportunity, but he never took it, and he left every possible door open for 9/11 to happen (yes, folks, it took years for a plan like that to come together the way it did, and I promise Clinton had a hand in ignoring the warning signs). Did Dubya have a chance to stop 9/11? Maybe. But if he had done something to stop it before it happened, we would’ve had another problem.

Any time we do act preemptively in an attempt to protect ourselves from a pending attack, people decry the move as premature and tragic. They complain (quite loudly) that there wasn’t enough evidence for us to take such action. Iraq is the perfect example. Plenty of mistakes have been made. The war wasn’t planned properly and our rules of engagement are atrocious (requiring our soldiers to see the sniper that’s picking them off before firing is a prime example of how ridiculous it is). I think we should’ve taken out Bin Laden before taking on a bigger responsibility in Iraq. Be that as it may, we’re there, and it was going to happen whether we liked it or not. If we hadn’t taken Saddam out, he might’ve formed an alliance with Iran that would eventually have spelled disaster for America.

In acting preemptively, we have stopped an active threat against us before that threat could become even more real. We know Saddam had weapons of mass destruction; he used mustard gas and sarin in bombs he used on Iranians and Kurds. If he had those weapons, you know he had others, and pictures like this tell us stories that thousands still refuse to believe:

foxbat

Those are US troops digging a MiG-25 Foxbat, an advanced fighter plane, out of the Iraqi sand. Saddam was allowed to have fighter jets, but had limited flying ability and wasn’t supposed to have them fitted to carry ordinance (weapons). Three of these practically brand-new Russian-made planes were found, all fitted to carry the weapons Saddam wasn’t allowed to have; more than 50 planes total were hidden near al-Taqqadum airfield. We know there were mass movements toward Syria in the days before we invaded. What else was he hiding?

The fact is that we’re never satisfied. If we don’t act to stop a major atrocity, we didn’t do enough; if we do act and disaster is averted, we acted too quickly and should be ashamed of ourselves. We can’t live this way.

It’s the same way with everything in our culture. We’re expressly forbidden from watching a potentially violent person without mountains of evidence. But when that person does snap and kills thirty people, such as in the Virginia Tech massacre, everyone cries foul that more should have been done–he should have been forced to get help, he should have been stripped of his civil liberty to buy firearms, blah, blah, blah. I’m not trying to make light of any issue, but we’re shooting ourselves in both proverbial feet by acting this way.

WWI was fought over a few issues, but was started by the Serbia assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand (yes, the band got it’s name somewhere). Americans were adamant that it wasn’t our fight, but it was the arms race that ultimately led Germany to start taking out her neighbors and eventually leading American leaders to decide that we had to help our allies. The anti-war marches then would put the marches against the Iraq war to shame. But we barely spent a year in that war before it ended, and some argue that it was the US involvement that turned the tide. We lost a lot of our soldiers in WWI and were in no hurry at all to fight again.

Hitler’s popularity was largely based on his insistence that Germany regain her dignity after being crushed so decisively during the first great war. The Allies so demeaned Germany in the terms of surrender that the German people were very bitter and quite embarrassed. Hitler, signing alliances with Italy’s Mussolini and Japan’s Tojo, began by slowly wearing away at his European neighbors–taking back the Rhineland, then the Sudetenland and later the rest of Czechoslovakia. Everyone was so busy trying to appease the bad guys and refusing to believe there was any evidence of hostility that they were blind to what was possible and what later happened.

Even now, we look back on WWII, the holocaust, and the other atrocities (like the rape of Nanking) and wonder why we didn’t get involved sooner. We all know why: if we had stopped Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo in their tracks, we would have later complained that we didn’t have enough evidence to make our actions right.

We can’t have it both ways. We can’t refuse to act because we don’t want to fight or take a risk and later complain that we didn’t do enough. History is littered with such indecision, and it has been the death of many a civilization. It will, one day, be our undoing.

You know why? We’ll never learn. We’re too proud to do that.

Comments (12)

Who’s Yo’ Daddy, Specter?

May 7, 09 2:50 PM

The Dark Knight is one of my all-time favorite movies. Heath Ledger beat the crap out of every actor who has ever played the Joker (don’t get me wrong…Jack Nicholson was great, but Heath gave the character a whole new personality). There is only one part in the movie that I can’t stand. Democrat senator Patrick Leahy has a bit role in the film. During the fundraiser/party scene, Leahy tells the Joker, “we’re not afraid of you!” I love the sentiment, but I can’t stand that they gave that role to Leahy. I promise you’d never see a Republican senator in any major film–not even a RINO.

Senator Arlen Specter–labelled “Benedict Arlen” by many American conservatives–switched parties after 29 years in office as a Republican. He did so just days after swearing to remain a Republican as a matter of principal. I’m not sure he thought it through, though, because things aren’t going so well for him.

In an effort to make sure Specter is a kept man, Democrats have revoked his seniority.

Specter sits on several subcommittees, and after nearly three decades was the ranking senator on each of them. Some political pundits have called the move by Democrats unprecedented; I believe I predicted something like this when he first announced that he was switching. I said then that they’d find a way to keep him on a short leash. It took them a matter of days to revoke his seniority. Harry Reid told him that Democrat leaders would review his record in 2010, at which point he might be able to “earn” his seniority back. Today, after Dick Durbin offered Specter his chairmanship of the crime subcommittee, Patrick Leahy immediately put the kibosh on the decision, showing absolute incredulity that any Democrat would dare do such a thing.

Specter was offended and promised, “I will be with Democrats on ALL procedural votes.” Harry Reid’s spokesman had this to say to the media after all the hubbub: “Sen. Reid never takes any votes for granted.”

Translation? You’re our bitch now, Specter. Assume the position.

This is the Democrat way of forcing loyalty. They don’t want someone who really has his constituents’ best interests at heart, they want someone who will side with them on every single issue. I promise that any vote that does not coincide with what his new masters want will immediately result in Specter’s being shunned. If he does vote out of step with shrill Democrat demands, he will likely lose his seat; if, in that case, he manages to hang onto it, he certainly won’t ever be given his seniority back by any living, breathing liberal. If he so much as farts the wrong way now he’ll be tarred and feathered.

Remember the Titans is another favorite movie. This reminds me sharply of the scene where Denzel Washington, after being told by the white team captain that they didn’t need any of the new colored players, leans in and says, “Gerry, if you want to get on that bus you will tell me right now…who is yo’ daddy? Who’s yo’ daddy, Gerry? Who’s yo’ daddy?”

Who’s yo’ daddy, Specter? Thaaaaat’s right. Quit whining.

Comments (10)
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