Nancy Pelosi: Power vs. Responsibility

Hat Tip to Black Five, Point Five, Blue Star Chronicles and finally Charlie Daniels for an open letter to Nancy Pelosi that he has on his Soapbox and Message Board.

First a little about Charlie Daniels, he is one patriotic American, and I mean the true blue hero kind of American, the kind of American that Congress needs to emulate. His song, "In America" (lyrics here) should be blaring over any air wave that the troops can tune in to. The astonishing thing about this song is that is wasn't written since 9/11 or since the War on Terror started, it was written in 1980. "In America" ranks up there with Toby Keith's "The Angry American", that is just how powerful it is. Now, if you haven't gone back and read the lyrics, please do and I would truly appreciate it if you would find the tune on iTunes or the like and really listen to it. It Rocks!!

Now, on to the focus of this post. Daniels' letter to Reid and Pelosi plainly states what the Democrats should be thinking about; the fallout from leaving Iraq without the job being done. He lists quite a few realistic outcomes and asks if they have a plan to counter that effect. It is quite remarkable.

What I am seeing with Pelosi is that she is still on her Speaker Honeymoon. She is flexing her muscles, making sure that everyone knows she is in charge. Just take a look at many of her photos and in particular some moving footage, there is an obvious smirk on her face. She is loving the limelight. Sadly, she is, as Daniels pointed out, thinking short term and only honing in on way to inflict pain on the White House. In short, she is concentrating on power.

Looking back to recent weeks with the issue over her requested military transport, she was fixated on her status, appearance and place in history as the first female Speaker. A responsible person who protests to be concerned with the lack of armor and equipment for the troops would have conversely taken a smaller plane, or flown commercial flights and then ask that the saved funds be put into equipping the troops.

A responsible person would, instead of attempting to smear the Commander in Chief at every opportunity, quietly go to the White House and talk with the President to hammer out significant, real and valuable answers to the problems facing our country in private. Instead, she is behaving like a newly selected team captain of the cheer leading squad at the high school of your choice.

I shudder to think how she will react when the terrorists bring their attacks to US soil, when Iran takes over Iraq for Al-Qaeda, when the Kuwaiti oilfields are cut off, and on a deeper level, how we are perceived on the world stage considering we have not seen a military event to its end since 1945. Daniels makes some amazingly chilling points in this letter and I hope that Pelosi and her followers realize that power and responsibility are not mutually exclusive.

Numbers II : What McCain "knows" about Tet '68

Map of Vietnam ~ circa 1967

Numbers again come into play as Congress continues the debate over the President's troop surge plan. As you may recall, a few days ago I took a look at numbers comparing the number of homicides in major US cities vs. the number of casualties that we have thus far in Iraq. I then took those same numbers and compared them to our troop losses in Vietnam. A gruesome comparison, I know, but one that truly needed to be looked at as Congress relentlessly reminds us of the US casualty total in Iraq in their statements on H.Con. Res. 63.

It seems that John McCain (R-AZ), as an '08 presidential candidate, felt the need to step into the spotlight and get some press in the middle of the oncoming Surge storm. I will blatantly tell my readers, I do not like McCain, for reasons that ironically lead back to Vietnam. It has been reported earlier this week by the AP and expounded on here by Joseph Farah of WorldNetDaily, that McCain feared a Tet '68-like offensive, the turning point in Vietnam, which wielded more propaganda than collateral damage. It appears that McCain was skilfully taking a page from his North Vietnamese captors' playbook by making such a comparison. The Vietnamese used propaganda at all levels during the war, Jane Fonda and her followers are just one sad example. The Iraq insurgency is obviously a student of this same Vietnamese propaganda machine.

Farah quotes AP's report of McCain's Tet analogy with this brief summary;

"Tet, a massive invasion in 1968 of South Vietnam by Communist North Vietnamese, inflicted enormous losses (my emphasis) on U.S. and South Vietnamese troops and is regarded as a point where public sentiment turned sharply against the war."

Farah criticizes this quote by giving a numbers analysis complete with stats that someone should fax to McCain's camp ASAP. Read on ...

Some 1,536 U.S. troopers were killed in the weeks-long campaign. South Vietnamese troops lost an additional 2,788 troops. But compare those numbers with enemy losses!

According to the best statistics now available, some 45,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong were killed in what was planned as a last-ditch, roll-of-the-dice effort to persuade Americans they could never win the war. Another 6,991 enemy soldiers were captured in the offensive.

In other words, no matter how you slice it, Tet was an unmitigated battlefield disaster for the enemy in Vietnam. But it proved to be an unmitigated media disaster for the U.S. at home.

As a student of the Vietnam War, I can assure you unequivocally that Vietnam was "lost" in the same fashion and with the same propaganda expertise that we are seeing today in Iraq. The positive is ignored while the press magnifies the casualties. Those of us old enough to remember will never forget the night that Walter Cronkite told America that we were losing the war in Vietnam. In that same vein today we see journalists beating their editors' doors down with gloom and doom at every turn of the page.

We see members of Congress referencing this same flawed gloom and doom journalism when they question high ranking DoD staff during hearings over the past few weeks, simply perpetuating the myth. Case in point, Sen. Carl Levin's (D-MI) obsession and later exaggeration of the intelligence community's use of the word "inappropriate" in a 2002 Pentagon briefing on the Iraq/Al-Qaeda connection, "has whipped into a political lather" as Douglas Fieth so appropriately states in the Albany Times Union today.

I highly recommend the Farah piece as it is overflowing with telling hindsight from Vietnam. McCain isn't the only one in Congress who should see this. Many of the "White Flag Republicans" need it as well. Along with a reminder, "Those who do not learn from History are doomed to repeat it."

How do we define "Support"?

Reminiscent of Bill Clinton's "What is is" Word Game, it appears that Congress has decided to take a page from the Clinton playbook and now, in a much more defiant and detrimental move, are playing with the word "support".

In today's WaPo article by Jonathan Weisman,GOP Looks Beyond War Measure to Fight on Funding, outlines the course of action for the GOP in reaction to the debate that is unfolding on the floor of the House and Senate this week over the deployment of more troops to Iraq. Sadly, many Republicans are bowing to pressure from the left to join them in supporting that non-binding *cough* useless resolution for reasons that simply boggle the mind.

Weisman's piece gave his readership the following quote;

When Rep. Heather A. Wilson (R-N.M.) charged that the resolution offers no support for troops not yet deployed to the battlefield, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) showed just how sensitive Democrats are to the charge.
"No one ought to hide behind the troops. No one ought to come to this floor and say that this Congress, 435 of us, will not support whatever soldier or sailor or Marine is deployed to Iraq," Hoyer said angrily. "Whether it is today or tomorrow, they will have our support."

Now, please go back and read that again. Hide behind the troops? By thinking in the best interest of the troops and their morale is an act of hiding behind the troops? They will have our support? If we take away belief in their mission, the funding for their operations and the trust that the Iraqi people put in our hands when they stood beside us at the start of this war, someone please tell me, what is left? What class of support is left? Again, mind boggling. It is abundantly clear that Congress needs an English Lesson on the meaning of the word support. There are obviously various shades to the dictionary definition yet I would like to specifically focus on definition 5;

to maintain (a person, family, establishment, institution, etc.) by supplying with things necessary to existence; provide for: to support a family.

This specific definition actually uses the example "to support a family". These troops truly are the deepest extent of family. Few Americans can say that they have no one whom they care for, whom they consider "family" that has put on the uniform of the USA. Is this how we treat family? Taking away things necessary to existence? Not truly supporting them by not providing for them? Of course not!!

As I write this I am watching the House debate on this non-binding resolution and I suggest that you ALL get your hands on the statement of Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI), he is simply kicking ass! He has it all out there and he is making a stand. God Bless him! He is not leaving anything in the clubhouse! Screw NY, I am moving to Michigan!

One last comment on this, as McCotter called "idiotic resolution", if we truly want an idea of what to do, I suggest we get some ballots sent to Iraq and ask the men and women on the ground, they are the ones who are truly making the sacrifice, they are one who are giving their lives, ask them what needs to be done. They obviously have a better grasp on the reality of Iraq than anyone in Congress ever will. Therefore once I hear what the troops say ~ then we will know what support truly is. Are you listening Congress?

Amen!

Words

The guy has the right idea

The WaPo has been taking their hits lately with shoddy reporting and mixed up headlines and etc. and I am being very kind. But last Friday's op-ed by Charles Krauthammer was right on. It was basically, and obviously much more eloquently, what I had said a few days ago about this entire issue of the non-binding resolution and he even caught the same confusions regarding a "civil war" that I saw with the NIE's report that everyone was making so much hoopla about. I really have to take note with the entire idea of the NIE and the data that they generate with the disclaimer that is is all based on incomplete work and that it is not based on any evidence, it is merely an estimate and not a prediction.

OK, so here is the big question, then what is it? If the data is flawed, incomplete and imperfect at best, then where is its usefulness and efficacy? We have an agency within the US Government that simply mirrors Congress, it generates useless things that generate imperfect debate that doesn't amount to much of anything except wasted tax dollars and more dead trees.

The crux of Krauthammer's piece is really the heart of this debate that Congress is preparing to affront;

When it came to doing something serious about the surge, the Senate ducked. It unanimously (81-0) approved sending Gen. David H. Petraeus to Baghdad to do the surge -- precisely what a majority of the senators said they did not want done.

Congress had their chance to speak out and make an argument, and they curled up in the fetal position. Now, with the '08 elections on the horizon everyone is jockeying for position much like a NASCAR Nextel Cup race when the yellow flag comes out and everyone deciding if they should go to the pits or not.

Now, the American people have pit passes with the Congress on track and the entire world in the stands waiting to see who pits, when and with what needs. Then, everyone will roar back onto the track and this will all start again. Post ions will ultimately change and as more Congressmen and woman, in particular those with presidential aspirations, present their own resolutions, I find it hard for any one resolution to take center stage and have the kind of impact that the left would like it to have nor the wiggle room that many on the right would like as well.

Meanwhile, our fighting men and women sit in a political limbo attempting to implement a strategy that may have its funding pulled right out from under them while they are selflessly putting their lives on the line for a Congress that sees them as nothing more than pawns in thier political chess game. Sad, so sad.