EarsToHear.net - http://www.earstohear.net
What is the Kingdom of God?

Will our descendents know virtue?

 

-----------

 

Human Events Online: Two Cents: Putting Two Massachusetts Blowhards in Their Place

Have you ever listened to politicians like Teddy Kennedy and John Kerry and wished you had the perfect retort to really put them in their place? Or maybe you've come up with a great response to one of their inane rants but had no place to air it.

I've had the same frustrations. That's why I love it when I get to see someone else do it -- especially when it's not a conservative Republican or someone else with a potential political axe to grind.

So today I want to share with you a glorious example of our beloved Lefties Kennedy and Kerry as the victims of a verbal two-point-takedown and pin by an Iraqi official discussing last weekend's better-than-expected elections.

On January 27, three days before the Iraq elections, Sen. Kennedy performed for the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Kennedy went on and on about how horrible the Bush Administration is, how poorly things are going in Iraq, how our military is now part of the problem in Iraq, and how Iraq is a quagmire -- just like Vietnam. (He, of course, went on to NOT mention Presidents Kennedy and Johnson's involvement in that war.)

Here is a portion of what Kennedy said:

"In the name of a misguided cause, we continued the  war too long. We failed to comprehend the events around us. We did not understand that our very presence was creating new enemies and defeating the very goals we set out to achieve. We cannot allow that history to repeat itself in Iraq.

"We must learn from our mistakes. We must recognize what a large and growing number of Iraqis now believe. The war in Iraq has become a war against the American occupation.

"We have reached the point that a prolonged American military presence in Iraq is no longer productive for either Iraq or the United States. The U.S. military presence has become part of the problem, not part of the solution."

Not to be outdone by Kennedy's bloviation, Sen. Kerry went on NBC's "Meet the Press" on January 30, the very day of the Iraq elections, and, while reminding everyone in the country why we should be glad he was not elected president, told Tim Russert:

"No one in the United States should try to over-hype this election.

"t's hard to say that something is legitimate when a whole portion of the country can't vote and doesn't vote.  I think this election was important.  I was for the election taking place.  You may recall that back in--well, there's no reason you would--but back in Fulton, Missouri, during the campaign, I laid out four steps, and I said at the time, 'This may be the president's last chance to get it right.'

"The four steps were, number one, massive rapid training.  Number two, you've got to do reconstruction, and you've got to get the services to the Iraqis. Number three, you've got to bring the international community in the effort. Number four, you've got to have the elections.

"Well, today we did number four, we had the elections.  But the other three are almost--I mean, they're lagging so significantly that the task has been made that much harder.  And I will say unequivocally today that what the administration does in these next few days will decide the outcome of Iraq, and this is--not maybe--this is the last chance for the president to get it right."

Now for the good part. On the afternoon of the 30th, CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer" had as one of its guests Feisal Istrabadi, the Iraqi Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, a man whom Blitzer described as "one man who helped plan the road Iraq hopes to take toward democracy." Asked for his response to Kennedy's remarks on the U.S. Military, Istrabadi stated:

"Well, obviously the senator from Massachusetts is free to say whatever he wants to for and on behalf of his constituents and as an American.

"But I would appreciate his not arrogating to himself the right to speak on behalf of Iraqis. We have a sovereign government that can do that, and it is at the invitation of that sovereign government that American forces are in Iraq now.

"And I expect that American forces will continue to be in Iraq after the transitional government emerges.

"The fact of the matter is, we need American forces to keep the peace and to secure our borders. And until we are capable of handling those two tasks ourselves, the Americans and the multinational force will likely stay at the invitation of our government."

And in response to Kerry's criticism of the administration's handling of Iraq, Mr. Istrabadi offered this thought:

"Well, with all respect again, of course the -- look, without the United States and without this administration, we would not have been liberated, we would not today be talking about an election and who may or may not emerge as possible contenders for whatever position.

"We will always be grateful to the United States. We will always be grateful to the government of the United States and the United Kingdom and their various allies in the multinational force. But the people who are going to make a difference toward the success or failure, God forbid, of this project are the people of Iraq, the people who today defied bombs and terrorists and explosions and possible death so that they could vote in a free election.

"These are the people who today emerged to regain control of their own futures, as any free peoples do, and it is we who will make the difference to the outcome of our country."

Thank you, Mr. Istrabadi. From all of us who didn't get to tell the world what we thought of Kennedy and Kerry's blowhard-ness.

-----------
 

Federalst 05-05 Digest:

The election in Iraq is a victory. Yet victory, like freedom, has many dimensions, many sizes, many aspects, many cultural meanings -- and it changes in significance over time. Too much can be made of this victory by assuming too much too soon. Clearly, this election did not establish the rule of law, the separation of mosque and state, or individual rights of free speech, religion, and assembly. Not by a long shot. Not yet, anyway.

Yet one should not underestimate the historic significance of this election. History's first truly free election took place nearly 4,000 years ago in the cradle of civilization, in what is now Iraq. The birthplace of laws -- the Hammurabi Code -- brought forth an election in the middle of a growing civil war. Symbolism aside, though, last Sunday's victory was a first for freedom -- one we hope will be followed by many more .

Wait eight hundred years, maybe less, and see how great the victory. The first victory to limit the Christian Divine Right of Kings was the modest constraint gained on King John in the Magna Carta (1215). It took four hundred years, a Renaissance, and a Reformation before the English people asserted the Rule of Law, any act of Parliament, as supreme authority. The English deposed three rulers, executed one, and fought a bitter Civil War in the 17th century to force their freedoms on any head of state. It took another hundred years, an Enlightenment, and a Great Awakening for Americans to expand that fierce determination to protect their '˜rights as Englishmen' to the idea that the individual is the sovereign of the state and is endowed with unalienable God-given rights. It took another hundred years, two more Christian Awakenings and a terrible War to extend the sovereignty of the individual to all races and both genders.

The election in Iraq will indeed liberate human minds to new possibilities of freedom. But only the Iraqi people can determine how great a victory the vote is in the coming days -- days certain to be marked by spasms of Jihadi violence. It took us 800 years. Godspeed.

The Patriot received many comments about the election from our military readers in Iraq. Here is a sampling of perspective from Army and Marine Patriots on the warfront: "Today I got to witness firsthand a new democracy take its first steps. At about 10am the streets were packed with large crowds of people walking to the polls. We were on edge waiting for more attacks that never came. By about 3pm we could relax a bit and talk to the people. The site was amazing." .... "The media have it bass-ackwards. Some of my guys ferried Dan Rather around the countryside. CBS, NBC, PBS and CNN just don't get it -- their reports completely failed to show the incredible energy and joy these voters exhibited." .... "As everyone came to work they were showing me the ink on their index fingers. This is the first time in their lives they have been able to exercise such a right -- the simple act of voting -- and getting their say in who governs them -- the looks on their faces say it all. I hope we stay in Iraq and finish this." .... "We dismounted from our vehicles and were instantly mobbed by about 200 kids. The kids were all over the place playing in the streets while their parents voted. I have never seen anything like it. People everywhere wanted to talk to us and thank us. This is what it must have been like when the Allies liberated Paris." .... "Iraqis of all ages wanted to shake our hands and thank us for allowing them to vote. The kids were proud to tell us that their parents voted. Adult after adult wanted to thank us for making this day happen. When the Iraqis voted they dipped their fingers in indelible purple ink so that polling officials could tell who had already voted. When we walked the streets the Iraqis would hold their purple fingers up in the air as a mark of pride." .... "The Iraqis' statements to us were all the same: 'Thank you for your sacrifices for the Iraqi people.' 'Thank you for making this day possible.' 'The United States is the true democracy in the world and is the country that makes freedom possible.' 'God blessed the Iraqi people and the United States this day.' 'This day is like a great feast, a wonderful holiday'." .... "I shook more hands today then I have ever in my life. If you missed a hand, they would follow for a mile to get a chance to shake and say thanks. It was nothing like we expected or have ever seen. The Iraqi people were strong and brave today. The Iraqis were stoic to danger, faced fear, and went out and voted. Then after they voted the Iraqis stayed on the streets to celebrate by singing, dancing, and trying to shake the hand of any American that they could find." .... "A homicide bomber drove up to a polling site, which was not too far from us, but he did not kill anybody but himself. After the bomb went off, the Iraqi voters calmly walked out of the polling site and spit on the remains of the suicide bomber. The polling site stayed open and the voting continued. That incident ran all day long on Iraqi TV -- but not on U.S. TV." .... "I have a sense of well being, satisfaction, exhilaration, NO mostly pride. And that feeling was all through the camp. I can't describe the feeling, but it was something in the air."

-----------

The Second Amendment Foundation

SAF today called upon the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to "take an important step for public safety" and close the Golden Gate! Bridge, which has been a popular suicide platform for more than 65 years.

"Several city supervisors want to ban handguns in San Francisco on the mere presumption that such a law would prevent crimes, accidents and suicides," said SAF Founder Alan M. Gottlieb. "Well, it is an absolute certainty that closing the bridge would prevent suicides, and perhaps many accidents, as well. And just for the sake of argument, one seriously might question whether any of the more than 1,300 fatal falls from the bridge since 1937 were cleverly-concealed homicides."