Senator John McCain gets a high five from me for saying what I think the majority of Americans feel...that MoveOn.org and their ilk ought to condemned by their Democrat pals and thrown out of the country on their...uhhh...posteriors.
Speaking in New Hampshire, CBS News caught the old lion trashing MoveOn for the Petraeus ad in no uncertain terms. He displayed the ad and said: "It’s disgraceful, it’s got to be retracted and condemned by the Democrats, and MoveOn.org ought to be thrown out of this country."
Unfortunately, with the ambivalence that characterizes modern politics McCain's campaign issued an `explanation' afterwards:"Senator McCain, like most Americans, is appalled by the MoveOn.org ad. Last night he expressed his outrage in words that did not convey his intended meaning. What he meant to say was that MoveOn's smear of General Petraeus' character should have no place in the American political debate."
I know, First Amendment and all that. But the senator likewise has a right to say what he feels and remember, the US has thrown agitators and saboteurs out of the country before during wartime. Read up on the Vallandigham case sometime.
Meanwhile the majority of Democrats, especially those running for president and commander-in-chief continue to dance to the Angry Left's tune and happily smear a man who's put his life on the line many times to protect their freedom. Not one of them has condemned the ad in the least.
And in the case of Senators Obama and Clinton, this is someone who they voted to confirm as commander in Iraq after an extensive and often insulting grilling on Capitol Hill. If they're right about him being a tool and an idiot, doesn't that say something about their judgement?
Remember that when you vote in November.
hat tip to GateWay Pundit
According to the latest polls, more Americans agree with MoveOn than want them thrown out.
ReplyDeleteAlso, you can hardly call this "wartime". This is more like the Cold War. I don't think either you or me want a repeat of McCarthy's witch trials.
hi Nazar,
ReplyDeleteHow goes it?
I'm not sure I agree with you about the polling data. Even the New York Times was surprised to run a poll and find out that a majority of Americans support victory in Iraq.Fox had the same result.
Polls can be skewed depenading on which questions you ask and how you ask them.
It's not the war the American people are upset about, IMO...it's the way it's been mismanaged until recently, and the lack of results.
Americans like victory , and expect it of our troops and our leaders.So if you asked people if they approved of how President Bush is handling Iraq, as opposed to whether they favored an immediate pull out and defeat or what they thought of General Petraeus,you get very different responses.
McCain's absolutely right..but then,he goes back to an earlier time, when anyone who spewed this kind of nonsense would be ostracized by his fellow Americans,and rightly so.
As I pointed out, we've expelled such saboteurs and agitators before. And yeah, I'm afraid I disagree with you about this being a Cold War when it started with the succesful attack and massacre of 3,000 Americans on our own soil.
I can't blame some of our fellow citizens for not taking it more seriously, given how the Bush Administration has handled it, but it remains war nevertheless, and one we had better win.
As for McCarthy and the so-called `witchtrials', a little history.
Remember that the trials and investigations you refer to were done by HUAC, not McCarthy.
All McCarthy did was to claim that Hollywood, the State Department and parts of academia and the media were riddled by Soviet agents and their allies, dupes and `fellow travelers' on the Left.
While a very small number of the people named by HUAC were innocent, McCarthy and HUAC were substantially and entirely correct.
As we now know, thanks to the now declassified Vendona Project, which monitored years of Soviet coded cables and the access we had to the Soviet archives after the Soviet empire fell before Putin closed them down again, the Soviets infiltrated American society and government to an astounding degree, and the list of active Soviet agents included the Rosenbergs, Alger Hiss
(Roosevelts' personal aide and confidant at Yalta), Harry Dexter White,Paul Robeson, Lillian Hellman, Leo Penn ( Sean's dad), journalist Walter Duranty and a host of others.
Most of them were allowed to skate or convicted of lesser offenses to avoid giving away Vendona,except for the Rosenbergs whom were caught red-handed ( pun intended) but they were guilty just the same.
The Leftist myth of `witch trials'is both persistant and an attempt to cover up what really happened.
I recommend Mona Charen's `Useful Idiots' as supplemental reading on this subject...and Ann Coulter also has written well on this subject, in `How To Talk To A Liberal If You Must', I believe.
All Best As Always,
FF
I'm afraid I disagree with you FF about public opinion. A recent CNN poll revealed that 58% of Americans are against the war. Where is the bias in that question? Is there any way to be clearer than that?
ReplyDeleteFrom everything that I've seen and read, only 35 or so percent of Americans support the current strategy. It's true that more Americans are agreeing that it's working, but that doesn't mean that they support the war. By this point, I think people are just too fed up, and thus have a lot of sympathy for groups like MoveOn.
One more thing: No matter how hard we try to get around it, Joe McCarthy attacked a lot of people with no solid evidence. The fact that he turned out to be right in many cases is completely irrelevant. It is entirely proper to prosecute people who genuinely wish harm to our country, but attacking people when you have no good evidence is setting a dangerous precedent.
Nazar
Hi Nazar,
ReplyDeleteAgain, it depends what, `against the war'means and how the question is phrased.And I'd want to see hard numbers regarding sympathy and support for the likes of MoveOn.
I would also agree that accusing people without evidence is wrong, but I would question your premise that there was no solid evidence.There's a reason that MCarthy and HUAC were consistently proven right.
Nowadays, the information is just more publicly available..and the Left is still in denial about it.
If you can and if you care to, I suggest you read the sources I mentioned, especially Charen's book. You'll find it interesting reading.
You're the guest, you get the last word if you want.
All best,
FF