As reported by the Boston Herald-Reporter, in a speech in Boston Sept. 9 Senator John Kerry said, regarding the Bush administration, “It is immoral to treat 9/11 as a political pawn (to) excuse the invasion of Iraq. They [9/11 victims] were attacked and killed not by Saddam Hussein but by Osama bin Laden.” Cynicism – especially regarding morality – of this magnitude does not speak well for the senator. Al Qaeda was not mentioned as a reason for invading Iraq in 2003, but to wipe out what the intelligence agencies of a number of nations insisted was Saddam’s WMD threat. No one has proven yet that he did not move those weapons to another country before March 2003.
Quoting the Boston Globe of March 25, 2004, “In a question-and-answer session before a Senate committee in 1971, John F. Kerry, who was a leading antiwar activist at the time, asserted that 200,000 Vietnamese per year were being ‘murdered by the United States of America’ and said he had gone to Paris and ‘talked with both delegations at the peace talks’ and met with communist representatives.” At the time, Kerry was a reserve naval officer committing an act of treason (defined as “the betrayal of a trust: TREACHERY”) with the enemy while Senator McCain and others were caged like dogs and tortured in the Hanoi Hilton.
This means that by the time he made that statement (his exact words, “So what I am saying is that yes, there will be some recrimination but far, far less than the 200,000 a year who are murdered by the United States of America …”), Kerry’s comrades/nation had murdered [his word] 1.6 million Vietnamese 1964-71 (or almost 4 percent of the population for 1970), mostly civilians – women, children, and old men. He’s never offered a scintilla of proof for that wacky accusation. Regarding morality, he betrayed his country in 1970 in France, lied to Congress in 1971, and spewed hatred on Sept. 9, using a monumental tragedy in a blatantly political act of disingenuousness.
Civilian as well as military deaths inevitably accrue to any war, but Kerry would not have made his statement Sept. 9 if at the end of fighting in May 2003 the Iraqis had behaved as most civilized people do. No sane person could have predicted that Iraqis would actually MURDER their own people – civilians, Muslims against Muslims – and that they would do so in the name of their god – Allah. Americans killed each other during the Civil War, but as soldier upon soldier, not as brutal thugs terrorizing and dismembering women and children and not for any religious reason.
In a recent Op-Ed piece for the New Hampshire Union Leader, Kerry said, “Iraq has made America less safe. The terrorists are not on the run. Terrorist acts tripled between 2004 and 2005. Al-Qaida has spawned a decentralized network operating in 65 countries, most of them joining since 9/11.” According to Kerry, terrorists in significant numbers apparently have just started crawling out from under the rocks in the last three years, but they’ve been crawling all over the world for decades, especially during the 1990s, when his democratic administration seemed totally unable or unwilling, or both, to even significantly try to stay their hand. Witness the WTC, 1993; Somalia, 1993; Riyadh, 1995; Dhahran Khobar Towers, 1996; U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania (at least 257 dead), 1998; USS Cole, 2000, and, finally, 9/11. Does Kerry believe the Girl Scouts were at work in those catastrophes?
In his speech to Congress on Sept. 20, 2001, President Bush said, “Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen.” In a speech in Atlanta on Sept. 7, 2006, he said, “In the early days after 9/11, I told the American people that this would be a long war, a war that would look different from others we have fought, with difficulties and setbacks along the way. The past five years have proven that to be true.”
Kerry and his ilk complain constantly about the fact that the conflict should be over, never stopping to realize (or being too ignorant to know) that this country’s revolution began in 1775 but that Washington did not take office until 1789, after 14 years of bitter war and argument.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
No comments:
Post a Comment