Dead Soldiers

[kg_veteran]

DEAD SOLDIERS

BY RALPH PETERS
<a target=new class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/19598.htm
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September 23, 2004 -- IMAGINE if, in the presidential election of 1944, the candidate opposing FDR had insisted that we were losing the Second World War and that, if elected, he would begin to withdraw American troops from Europe and the Pacific.

We would have called it treason. And we would have been right.

In WWII, broadcasts from Tokyo Rose in Japan and from Axis Sally in Germany warned our troops that their lives were being squandered in vain, that they were dying for big business and "the Jew" Roosevelt.

Today, we have a presidential candidate, the conscienceless Sen. John Kerry, doing the work of the enemy propagandists of yesteryear.

Is there nothing Kerry won't say to win the election? Is there no position he won't change? Doesn't he care anything for the sacrifices of our troops in Iraq?

And if he does care about our soldiers and Marines, why is he broadcasting remarks that insist — against all hard evidence — that the terrorists are winning?

Has he seen the situation with his own eyes? I'll gladly tell him how to get there. I'll even be his guide. And he can smell what remains of Saddam's mass graves — with new ones still being discovered. He can taste the joy of freedom among the Kurds. He can see the bustling commerce throughout the country — despite the violence that alone makes headlines.

Above all, he could see the magnificent performance of our troops, their dedication and professionalism. And their humanity, their goodness.

But Kerry doesn't want to see those things. He's reverting to form. Just as he lied about our troops three decades ago, encouraging our enemies of the day and worsening the suffering of our POWs in North Vietnam, today he's pandering to a new enemy.

Imagine the encouragement the terrorists, insurgents and global extremists draw from Kerry's declarations of defeat, from his insistence that our efforts in Iraq and in the War on Terror have failed.

As he always does, Kerry slips in qualifiers. Of course, Iraq's important. And he'll fight terror, too. It's just that the Bush administration doesn't know how to do anything. A Kerry presidency would let us withdraw our troops, collect more allies, succeed where others have "failed" and win the hearts and minds of the whole, wide world.

Earlier this week, Kerry made a much-ballyhooed speech offering four generalizations about how he would fix Iraq. But there was no detail, not a single nut or a lonely bolt. And the current administration is already doing most of what Kerry suggested.

As for involving the French and Germans, the truth is that they'd do more harm than good. These are the corrupt cynics who made billions from the U.N. Oil-for-Food program while the Iraqi people suffered. The French kiss up to every dictator willing to wink in their direction. The German military barely exists — it's just an employment agency for uniformed bureaucrats — and the French military's sole competence lies in slaughtering unarmed black Africans.

As for the United Nations, any day now we'll see a huge banner hanging from its Manhattan headquarters: Dictators For Kerry.

Even if I detested everything about President Bush, I'd vote for him just to rub it in the faces of the Germans, the French and all of the tyrants rooting for the Iraqi people to slip back into despotism. We Americans choose our own presidents, and we don't take orders from Europeans or from any of Kerry's other Swiss boarding-school pals.

I think it's great that Kerry speaks fluent French. I wish he'd go to France where he could speak it all the time.

In an election year, our engagement in Iraq is a legitimate topic for sober debate. But Kerry isn't serious. All he does is to declare defeat. He certainly doesn't want to be al Qaeda's candidate, but he's made himself into their man through his irresponsibility.

If Kerry were insisting, without caveats, that we're going to stay the course and win, while backing up his criticisms with convincing details of how he would improve our efforts, that would be fine. But his mad claims of disaster and his inability to maintain a firm position unquestionably give aid and comfort to the enemy.

The terrorists and their allies already intended to increase the level of violence in Iraq before November. But Kerry's pandering has encouraged them to pull out all the stops. I wish it were otherwise, that our election process had more integrity, but the truth is that every roadside blast and car bomb in Iraq is meant to support John Kerry.

Meanwhile, Kerry has assembled the most despicable cast of has-beens and failed officials in campaign history. He's represented by the likes of Jamie Rubin — a Clintonite who so loved America that he moved to London, returning to our shores only to tell real Americans how we need to vote.

Putting Rubin on the talk-show circuit demonstrates how badly the Democratic elite is out of touch with the country it claims to represent. With his permanent sneer and his condescending snicker, Rubin represents nearly all that working Americans — and our troops — despise about today's Dems.

In 1944, the Democrats had FDR. In 2004, they've got the stretch-limo version of Mike Dukakis.

There was a wartime election in 1864, too. The Democratic Party's candidate, former Gen. George McClellan, ran on a platform that declared President Abraham Lincoln's policy a failure. The price of McClellan's rhetoric was a prolonged war and tens of thousands of dead Americans.

In 1864, the citizens of the North were steadfast. They rejected the Democratic Party's warnings of defeat and saved the Union. In 2004, the American people, North and South, East and West, need to reject the cynical lies of John F. Kerry and vote to support our troops and save Iraq.

Ralph Peters is a retired Army officer and the author of "Beyond Baghdad: Postmodern War and Peace."

[seal614]

Kerry is everything bad you could ever think of. Haven't we already established/agreed on this?

- Brian

p.s. we should still bash his pathetic ass anyhow

[sturm und drang]

"And if he does care about our soldiers and Marines, why is he broadcasting remarks that insist — against all hard evidence — that the terrorists are winning?"

"The fact is, we're in deep trouble in Iraq," Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) conceded.
"We made serious mistakes," said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, blamed the glaring failures in Iraq on "the incompetence in the administration."

Looks like Kerry isn't the only one who thinks the situation in Iraq has devolved into unwinnable chaos.

[LRB]

Those quotes hardly equate to the opinion that the terrorists are wining in Iraq. Is the going difficult? Yes, however it would be unfair to expect it all to be a cake walk. We've been engaged in some form of combat operations in Iraq for more than a year and have lost a little over 1,000 casualties. While one life is an infinitely high cost, this number in itself is not infinitely higher than a single life. All life is precious. But just because a course results in loss of life does not mean that it is wrong. To do nothing after we were attacked on 9/11 would have arguably resulted in even more loss of life. What's clear here is that Kerry and his cronies in the MSM have vastly unrealistic expectations. And anybody who expects that some mistakes won't be made in war is totally unrealistic.

[Chiwas]

This is not the worst yet.

This will worsen for the next 2 or 3 years (maybe more) sending more and more soldiers, growing the chaos and murders, other countries getting into the war, some for the other side. And finally a shamed escape.

I watched two times the same movie with different titles. One of them was Viet Nam, the other Afghanistan (with the Soviets starring).

The successful military invation of a medium or large size nation has become fiction since 1945 (or a couple of years before).



Edit. Maybe only Czechoslovakia by the URSS with a lot of support of the other soviet satellites, in the middle of the Cold War, and the US busy at Nam. Very special conditions.

[madape]

The democrats, and especially John Kerry, don't have the spine to win this war. They've already conceded defeat. I hope that Kerry realizes that this is a war the world can't afford to lose. I think he's been convinced that the only way he can win this election is if he convinces Americans that losing in Iraq is inevitable.

He's convinced at least one weak-spirited American on this board. Either that or he's just mirroring the opinions of the only contingency in this country he could ever hope of getting votes from. Judging by the polls though, the majority of Americans aren't as weak of spirit as our friend Hanoi John. Thank goodness.

If Kerry gets elected, we will lose this war... The Islamists will feast on this pussy.

[madape]

Originally posted by: Chiwas
This is not the worst yet.

This will worsen for the next 2 or 3 years (maybe more) sending more and more soldiers, growing the chaos and murders, other countries getting into the war, some for the other side. And finally a shamed escape.

I watched two times the same movie with different titles. One of them was Viet Nam, the other Afghanistan (with the Soviets starring).

The successful military invation of a medium or large size nation has become fiction since 1945 (or a couple of years before).



Edit. Maybe only Czechoslovakia by the URSS with a lot of support of the other soviet satellites, in the middle of the Cold War, and the US busy at Nam. Very special conditions.

I watched a movie once too. It was called post WWII Germany. I saw another. It was called post WWII Japan. I suggest you watch those too. Check back with me and I'll let you know how both countries made out in the long term.

[knowitall]

Of course your wrong to compare Germany and Japan to the Iraq war. You are right if you mean this time we're the invaders. Makes a person stop to compare past and present leaders.

[dude1394]

Yup we should have left saddam in power to rape, pillage and murder. Yup, we're the genghis kahns all over again. Kerry and the democrats are trying so hard to relive their glory days in vietnam when they succefully turned tail and ran and consigned the vietnamese people to a lifetime of hell.

They cannot be trusted with our national defense until the 60's crowd is purged.