EFFin’ Unsound

Lou Guzzo is under the delusion that the Democrats just destroyed the country.

Thanks to Demos, It’s a Sad Day for the United States

Well, you’re welcome? Seriously, why is it so hard to link to his posts?

It is truly a sad day in Congress and an even sadder day in the history of the United States. With its vote on a resolution repudiating President Bush’s plan to send additional troops to Iraq, the House, now controlled by the Democratic Party, has obviously failed to heed the warning voiced a century ago by the great American philosopher in his profound book, “The Life of Reason”:

I prefer one of Santayana’s American contemporaries, Mark Twain.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

“I left these shores, at Vancouver, a red-hot imperialist. I wanted the American eagle to go screaming into the Pacific. It seemed tiresome and tame for it to content itself with he Rockies. Why not spread its wings over the Phillippines, I asked myself? And I thought it would be a real good thing to do

“I said to myself, here are a people who have suffered for three centuries. We can make them as free as ourselves, give them a government and country of their own, put a miniature of the American constitution afloat in the Pacific, start a brand new republic to take its place among the free nations of the world. It seemed to me a great task to which had addressed ourselves.

“But I have thought some more, since then, and I have read carefully the treaty of Paris, and I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Phillippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem. . .

“It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people free, and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.”

The Democrats, ignoring the lesson they should have learned in withholding support of our effort in the Vietnam War half a century ago, have done it again because they cannot remember the past. With a large measure of hypocrisy, they have said they support our troops while they clearly do not support the troops’ mission in Iraq.

They don’t support the mission; It would be hypocricy not to oppose it. Although the resolution was specifically about the troop increase. But if the lesson is that you can convince a president to get out eventually, that seems like they did learn the lesson.

It bears repeating. We should have won the Vietnam War and made it possible for Vietnam to become a democratic republic, instead of the Communist nation it is now. The crucial battle in Vietnam, the Tet Offensive, was actually an American victory and would have led to the defeat of the Viet Cong Communists. But the loud-mouthed peaceniks at home and their allies in Congress withdrew support and funds from our military forces in Vietnam, with the assistance of that traitorous scamp, Jane Fonda — who is at it again today.

Let’s see. Tet was 1968. Church-Cooper was 1970 and that only dealt with funding in Cambodia. So, shouldn’t we have, I don’t know, won in those 2 years or something according to Guzzo’s theory?

Just as they are trying to tell us today, the majority of our military leaders then tried to inform us that we were winning the war in Vietnam. But the defeatist voices at the time persuaded our political leaders, including then President Lyndon Johnson, to retreat from Vietnam and accept defeat — the first military defeat in American history. And now, “those who cannot remember the past” in the Democratically controlled House of Representatives have taken an action that could lead to our second military defeat. Their resolution does not force President Bush’s hand, of course, because he is the Commander in Chief under the Constitution.

Well, the Constitution gives Congress broad powers. It’ll be almost impossible to cary them all out because of the President’s veto power and Senate rules. But let’s see what Congress is allowed to do with regard to war and peace:

“To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;

“To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;

“To provide and maintain a navy;

“To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;

“To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;

“To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;”

Look at what the founders said Congress can do, and then ask yourself if they would think a fucking resolution is too far? Holy shit.

But it paves the way for an ultimate rejection by the same peacenik crowd of sorely needed funds for our military forces in Iraq. Withdrawing too early from Iraq will mean the collapse of the democratic government our troops made possible and the freedom and liberty most of the Iraqi people have cherished. Withdrawal will also bring another dictator in the Saddam Hussein mold to Iraq.

Viet Nam was already lost. We killed millions of people in Viet Nam. Poisoned South Viet Nam to the point that decades later the birth defects in the South are horrendous compared with the North (not to mention the children of Americans who served over there compared to people of that generation who didn’t).

The shame withdrawal will bring to America must be shared by the Liberal, anti-war print and broadcast news media in the U.S. The media’s hate-Bush campaign was a primary factor in brainwashing the American public and, in the words of another philosopher, making it possible to “snatch defeat from the jaws of victory” in Iraq.

It won’t be shared by Bush for getting us there in the first damn place. It won’t be shared by the Republican Congresses that let him get away with losing. It’ll be the Democrats who pointed out that we had already lost. And of course the American people for realizing that we had lost before the dead ender Republicans.

And the Democratic members of the House need to be reminded that their present action marks the first time in American history that the opposition party has not backed a President in time of war. This war — against international terrorists — could actually be the most serious conflict we have ever experienced. We are fighting a beastly, uncontrollable extremist segment of Muslims, who are defying many of the peaceful Islamists, and they have their sights on killing Americans everywhere in the world, including women and children. How the Democrats can ignore the worldwide danger is America’s greatest mystery.

This took me less than a minute to find:

“Many politicians from Northern states whose industry depended on trade with Britain were horrified by the prospect of war with that country. The Federalist Party in Congress was united in opposition to the war as soon as it was declared. A document called “An Address of Members of the House of Representatives… on the Subject of War with Great Britain,” signed by 34 of 36 House Federalists, was widely circulated and put forward Federalist views on the subject. It argued that the parliamentary procedures used by Democratic-Republicans to launch the war were anti-democratic and hostile to “Representative liberty”; that “war upon the land” as a response to attacks against “commerce upon the ocean” was not justified or effective; that the war would involve a dangerous entanglement with France, then fighting Britain in the Napoleonic Wars; and that with the U.S. unprepared for war and militarily weak, a disaster might result - “a war of invasion may invite a retort of invasion.”^[1]

“Some Federalists refused to cooperate with the war. Caleb Strong, the Governor of Massachusetts, refused to call out the State militia to support the war. He adhered to the “states rights” view that only the Governor had to power to call out the state militia, not the U.S. President. The impact of this action was intensified by the military’s problems finding volunteers, which became serious as the war dragged on.”

Of course the difference between the war of 1812 and the war in Iraq is that in 1812 the future of our country was actually in some danger. We could leave Iraq today if we wanted to without losing New Orleans (maybe we could actually use some of that money to fund building it back) or having DC sacked.

It is, indeed, a very sad, sorry day in the history of the once-greatest country on God’s green earth. By forgetting our past, we have endangered our future.

Talk about your defeatist. A resolution or Congress doing not even what they were elected to do (yet) and suddenly we aren’t the, “greatest country on God’s green earth.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 20th, 2007 at 7:47 pm and is filed under Carl. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.