The Real Democratic Uprising
The news this week that NATO strikes and Libyan rebels killed Muammar Gadhafi was a blip on the radar at the Ever Red State Network.
That’s mainly because this trumped-up conflict was nothing, if not nebulous, from the beginning.
For starters, Libya retreated from its adolescent posturing eight years ago, quaking in fear when US troops stormed into Baghdad and overthrew Saddam Hussein.
Gadhafi agreed to renounce Libya’s development of weapons of mass destruction the following year, and then became a global joke – a rambling, bizarre-looking head of state more deserving of the title “tail of state.”
Almost under their breath, one leftist rag had the temerity to acknowledge the real democratic uprising of the Middle East this week: Iraq’s first elections conducted entirely without US supervision or support.
William Shawcross of the UK Guardian did his best to tuck these horribly humiliating words at the very bottom of his story:
“Iraq may yet even become a model for democratic change in other Arab countries. If so, who deserves some credit? The much maligned President Bush. And Tony Blair.”
As Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow learned on Sunday, success is the best form of revenge. But the wisdom of George W. Bush and Tony Blair is hardly the juiciest morsel of vengeance in this article.
According to Shawcross, the Iraqi elections boasted none of the sectarian or ethnic boycotts of 2005, to include Iraq’s Sunni Muslim minority.
Pause and start a drum roll in your head for all the Democrat politicians who said this would never happen – Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Carl Levin, Harry Reid, Jack Murtha, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, etc.
But we’re not finished.
Shawcross reports that ALL of Iraq’s Islamist parties lost parliamentary numbers, including radical backers of Moqtada Al-Sadr (eight percentage points). The Islamic Party of Iraq, the Sunni extremists, were wiped out completely.
(Again, drum roll and name-and-shame all the Democrats who said THAT would never happen, especially if we kept Guantanamo Bay open and escalated our military presence in the Middle East.)
The Guardian would not publish this if John McCain were president. It’s obvious that this is to persuade the paper’s leftist audience of what they already believe – the only way for the US to resolve the Iraq issue was to elect a left-wing leader.
But Shawcross reveals a glaring ignorance of who did the heavy lifting in this war – the US military, most of all, followed by coalition troops from all over the world.
Over 4,400 American soldiers died. Thousands more were wounded, and untold hundreds of thousands rotated in and out of Iraq throughout its eight-year campaign to ensure its success.
Not one US soldier was conscripted into service. None were forced to reenlist, although many did endure the hardship of stop-loss/stop-movement policies. No matter the impulse or reason to hesitate, Americans walked into US military recruiting offices year after year to end up in Iraq.
We know the futility and darkness of war.
We know the painful ignorance of non-participants to its grisly, monotonous and hopeless nature.
We know that lives get taken, ruined and changed irrevocably. The soldier does not walk a happy road when he is called upon to do his real job.
But at long last, with lackluster fanfare only an unconscionable leftist could muster, our perseverance and professionalism is vindicated. Publicly. In print. For the record.
For a US Army sergeant who fought in two tours of Operation Iraqi Freedom, it’s a prouder moment than you can imagine.
© 2011 Ed’s Voices LLC
George W. Bush: Character Matters
As one who served under his command in the War on Terror, I will always be thankful for a strong, determined and uncompromising leader in George W. Bush. And I will always remember this about him as a man: the importance he placed on character.
Let’s go back just a little to mid-2008, before the economy really went south and the big argument was still over national security. The end of Bush’s presidency was in sight, but we weren’t yet in total crisis mode over feeding our families or being able to provide for our own retirement. It was certainly a tense time. But we could still sleep at night.
I returned home from my second deployment to Iraq in June 2008. I witnessed personally, and participated in, the Troop Surge of 2007. In dramatic fashion, with sheer determination and our inimitable battlefield dominance, against the wishes and dire faux prophecies of the Democrat Party, the U.S. military had squashed the Islamic terrorists decisively, with no small amount of help from ordinary Iraqis, who were sick of sitting on the fence. I was moved at the time to write a letter to President Bush, because before I left for Iraq, in late 2006, I wrote him to say that this surge was my last effort on this war; if we weren’t going to win, I was going to withdraw my support for it.
So in that letter, I apologized to Bush, because I realized from firsthand knowledge that he had been right all along. It felt like even more of an accomplishment returning from the Surge than it did from my first deployment in early 2005. As we once saw with Pearl Harbor, and as we’ve seen today with the Tea Party, when America’s core is awakened and her tail begins to rattle, no one can stop us. It reminded me of Ronald Reagan’s words: “There is no weapon formed in the arsenal of man so formidable as the moral courage of free men and women.”
So, to read the headline today that Bush forgave rapper Kanye West, who infamously declared after Hurricane Katrina that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people,” is for me an exceptional vindication. It’s equivalent to Harry Reid coming out and acknowledging that he was wrong to pronounce the war lost: “I was wrong. The war was not lost. I owe Mr. Bush and the U.S. military an unequivocal apology, and I ask your forgiveness.”
As I thought about it, though, I also realized that there’s probably one lesson West is very unlikely to learn, and that is the importance of character. West had to be goaded into beseeching Bush’s forgiveness by Matt Lauer, of all people. His star has fallen, and his career is in the toilet. He’s being sued by Suge Knight of Death Row Records, and his sponsors have been pulling the plug on his gravy train ever since the incident with Taylor Swift at the American Music Awards.
For we know – or at least, we ought to know – that West did not make his comments because he sincerely believed them, or because he truly, deeply cares about the people of his own race. We know that West didn’t suddenly turn up in downtown New Orleans with a bucket, bailing water out of houses, in the aftermath of Katrina (although help poured in from across America, mostly from white people with the resources and heart to go). We know that West did not volunteer to man the helicopters that criss-crossed the submerged city rescuing survivors on top of their roofs. No, again, that ended up being done by mostly white rescue workers and volunteers.
West said what he said because of the publicity it generated, and his market share went through the roof. It was a popular thing to do throughout Bush’s presidency to malign him for one thing or another. The entire Hollywood Left, the liberal media, the Democrat Party, the international community and academia all jumped on the dogpile, burying an American president in slander, mud and contempt.
But Bush refused, and still refuses, to lower himself to their level. Instead, he heaped hot coals on West’s head by forgiving him. It’s the mark of a true soldier, to peacefully withstand and absorb the adolescent rants of the people you protect with your life and reputation, and then forgive them if and when they realize the error of their ways. American soldiers know this; the people we protect live in a bubble of blissful ignorance, never having to face the realities of invasion and tyranny, because of the bravery of a handful of rough men. It would seem that Bush knows it too.
Folks, I’d argue Mr. Bush to the end of time on some of his domestic initiatives. But the man gives us no reason to question his commitment to our national security. Consider this:
He was maligned by the Left before he even campaigned for the office of President of the United States.
He was maligned by the Left while he campaigned for the office.
He was scrutinized, questioned and dismissed when he won on election night in 2000.
He was held in contempt as president because he ended up winning in 2000.
He was spat upon for taking ONE vacation in August 2001, while Americans were supposedly “suffering” from a recession.
He has been accused alternately of neglect, poor response, cooperation and even conspiracy to bring about the events of September 11th, 2001.
He was mocked immediately for how he comported himself in the aftermath of 9/11.
He was dismissed by the Democrat Party, the leftist media and the international community for pointing the finger at Iraq, Iran and North Korea in his “Axis of Evil” speech in 2002.
He was opposed from the start for demanding that Saddam Hussein account for his WMD program.
He was accused of lying and misleading the public about WMDs, about charging ahead without giving diplomatic channels and UN weapons inspectors “more time” to complete an inspection Hussein would never allow.
When the US-led invasion decisively struck at Iraq, toppling the Ba’athist (socialist) regime in Baghdad in just three weeks, he was mocked for standing in front of a banner that read, “Mission Accomplished.”
Throughout the Iraq War, things over which he had no direct, face-to-face control were blamed squarely on him – Abu Ghraib, for example.
Despite Iraq forming its first government in 2005, the liberal media refused to acknowledge its sovereignty through Bush’s presidency, instead parroting the claim that the Iraq War was another US imperialist adventure.
Throughout the 2004 election, the media sided repeatedly with the asinine claims of Democrat nominee John Kerry, an anti-war leftist with a history of lying about U.S. wars and U.S. soldiers.
In 2005, the Left mounted a new offensive in the face of Bush’s decisive re-election victory, ratcheting the blame game to new heights. They blamed the federal response to Hurricane Katrina on him, even though the City of New Orleans and the state of Louisiana had been run by liberal Democrats for decades.
In 2006, the Iraq War deteriorated to levels that required a huge military offensive. When Bush decided that we would mount that effort, the Left opposed it from start to finish, refusing to acknowledge its success until Bush left office.
In 2007, while I and my fellow GIs fought bravely to regain control of the battlefield in Iraq, Democrats rushed to the microphones and cameras to denounce everything we did – the Surge, scandals with Blackwater (since exonerated) and scandals with Marines at Haditha and soldiers being abusive toward Iraqi detainees (since exonerated).
And through it all, George W. Bush and the U.S. military remained focused on the mission, and completed it, with an astounding come-from-behind that left even Bush’s contemptible successor admitting that it worked out better than anyone had imagined.
And all because character matters.
So today, from the Great Northwest, I extend a sharp, crisp and respectful salute to my former commander-in-chief, who saw in 2006 what I did not see, and led me as a soldier to face the conflict instead of run from it. Because of his example, I have learned not to turn and run from the fight that now lays before us – stopping the Left in the wake of his departure.
And to Kanye West, I would extend an erect middle finger – except that I too am a man of faith, like Mr. Bush. And I wouldn’t want to miss the opportunity to follow a good leader this time around.
© 2010 Ed’s Voices LLC
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