Listen to This Voice
I’m trying to figure out what Zell Miller’s career is going to be in retirement. Should Bush be re-elected, I guess he’s done… unless he decides to zig-zag again, and goes off to speak before Moveon.org crowds. Should Kerry be elected, I guess he’ll continue speaking on the right-wing circuit.
Supposedly, the theme for the night was “Land of Opportunity”. Indeed, that would match Zell Miller’s 1992 speech before the Democratic Convention. The 2004 speech offered… no hope. The curious thing about the RNC Convention speeches, with the exception of Schwarzeggar: How hard is it to stick some rhetoric into speeches that smack of hope? And is it just me, or has Bush Campaign just decided to wave domestic issues altogether?
Well, I guess, let’s… listen to this voice.
In 1940, Wendell Wilkie was the Republican nominee.
And there is no better example of someone repealing their “private plans” than this good man. He gave Roosevelt the critical support he needed for a peacetime draft, an unpopular idea at the time.
Hold on a minute. Is this an endorsement for the return of the draft?
Now, while young Americans are dying in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the Democrat’s manic obsession to bring down our Commander in Chief.
I find it curious. Shouldn’t it be un-American to think that the nation is so weak that it cannot handle politics — politics in the true and most noble sense of the term, ie: differences of opinion? Yet, there we have it. Some think that America is weak, weak, weak.
It was Democratic President Harry Truman who pushed the Red Army out of Iran, who came to the aid of Greece when Communists threatened to overthrow it, who stared down the Soviet blockade of West Berlin by flying in supplies and saving the city.
Sure. It was Democratic President Harry Truman who also decided it was a bad idea to overthrow the Nationalistic freely elected president of Iran Mossadegh. It was the British Prime Minister Churchill who bid his time until some more acceptable president would do so, so that Great Britain could again enjoy a free flow of oil. It was the Republican President Dwight David Eisenhower who was sold on the idea that we should overthrow him for the sake of defeating Communism. And it was the Democratic President Jimmy Carter who got the blame for it when the Iranians revolted against this, and gave themselves a crappy repressive fundamentalist Islamic regime. (And I’ll tie this in with a later Zeller Miller comment.)
It was also the Republican President Dwight David Eisenhower who stopped (technically stalled) the Korean War… before we liberated every last Korean, and for that matter every last Chinese.
Time after time in our history, in the face of great danger, Democrats and Republicans worked together to ensure that freedom would not falter. But not today.
My point being, time after time Democrats and Republicans looked at the price-tag, saw that these things were counter-productive to the overall goal, and moved on. Or, time after time Democrats and Republicans decided “liberation” wasn’t a worthy goal, alternating roles.
It was the Republicans who opposed the Democrat Bill Clinton’s “liberation” of Kosovo.
Motivated more by partisan politics than by national security, today’s Democratic leaders see America as an occupier, not a liberator.
And nothing makes this Marine madder than someone calling American troops occupiers rather than liberators.
My opinion, your opinion, his opinion, her opinion does not matter here. The question of whether “American troops are occupiers or liberators” belongs to… IRAQIS. And, for the sake of fighting nationalistic guerilla warriors… not even necessarily very many of them.
Tell that to the one-half of Europe that was freed because Franklin Roosevelt led an army of liberators, not occupiers.
Tell that to the lower half of the Korean Peninsula that is free because Dwight Eisenhower commanded an army of liberators, not occupiers.
Tell that to the half a billion men, women and children who are free today from the Baltics to the Crimea, from Poland to Siberia, because Ronald Reagan rebuilt a military of liberators, not occupiers.
You know… we occupied Germany. We occupied Japan. In fact, we can consider those two America’s most successful occupations.
I’ll get to Reagan in a minute, but question: what nation did our troops “liberate” during his reign? Grenada… I guess, though that was pure “wag the dog”. (In the case of Latin America, he let native fascists do his dirty work… therefore we didn’t occupy them. In the case of Europe — diplomacy as the Soviets disintegrated, largely due to overreach.)
It is the soldier who salutes the flag, serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag, who gives that protester the freedom to abuse and burn that flag.
You can never go wrong bringing up the dirty spector of “flag burning”. I might as well add this: the reason the coffins come home draped in flags is because otherwise they looked too depressing.
No one should dare to even think about being the Commander in Chief of this country if he doesn’t believe with all his heart that our soldiers are liberators abroad and defenders of freedom at home.
“And they were happy — they’re not happy they’re occupied. I wouldn’t be happy if I were occupied either. ” — W, April 13, 2004.
But don’t waste your breath telling that to the leaders of my party today. In their warped way of thinking America is the problem, not the solution.
They don’t believe there is any real danger in the world except that which America brings upon itself through our clumsy and misguided foreign policy.
Things are rather complicated. Nuanced, if you will. Why, take Eisenhower and Iran, for instance. I don’t think Superman is even pure good… is he?
Beyond which, I’m not going to dwell on a red herring straw man that is the second sentence.
It is not their patriotism — it is their judgment that has been so sorely lacking. They claimed Carter’s pacifism would lead to peace.
Carter was a pacifist? Huh? He started the military budget buildup after the Committee on Present Danger told the public the world of the growing Soviet threat… the military buildup that Reagan merely accelarated. His administration aided the Afghan Holy Warriors… in fact, according to , Brzezinski… nay, that can be too easily construed to fit the “America is the problem” canard.
They claimed Reagan’s defense buildup would lead to war.
Well, in the old “guns vs butter” debate, we have, as Zell Miller put it in 1992: without a government that is on their side, those children have no hope. And when a child has no hope, a nation has no future. But never mind.
Listing all the weapon systems that Senator Kerry tried his best to shut down sounds like an auctioneer selling off our national security but Americans need to know the facts.
Pointless to go down his list. Most of them come from a few votes, which if we want to put in historical context, I’ll just say go dig up George Bush I’s 1992 State of the Union speech where he proposes, at the behest of Dick Cheney, a “streamlined military”. John Kerry was joined by Dick Cheney, who requested more cuts… during the 1980s as a congressman he had this crazy, insane concept of “balancing the budget”. Don’t you hate career Senators who make compromising votes?
Besides which, here’s a campaign slogan: John Kerry: Fighting Against Bloated Pentagon Pork. Thanks for reminding me!
As a war protester, Kerry blamed our military.
Depends on how you define “military”. He blamed the government. The government deserved blame.
As a Senator, he voted to weaken our military. And nothing shows that more sadly and more clearly than his vote this year to deny protective armor for our troops in harms way, far away.
He actually did vote for the bill. Before he voted against it. Actually kudos to Al Franken for his phrase on the matter– Kerry trying to rescind some tax cuts so as to– pay for it: The Republicans were actually against that vote, before they were for it. Spread that meme!
George Bush understands that we need new strategies to meet new threats.
No. Not really “new”.
I have knocked on the door of this man’s soul and found someone home
Kind of like Bush looking into Putin’s eyes and catching a glimpse of his soul?
Now, let’s listen to this voice on Chris Matthew’s show (past the roundtable composed of a batch of Republicans). Zell Miller seems to not understand the idea that Democrats offering “spitballs in combat” is the same cartoonish version of reality as Republicans “starving the kids”, and thus… challenges Chris Matthews to a duel.
MILLER: I wish we lived in the day where you could challenge a person to a duel.
….
MATTHEWS: Well, that was unexpected turn of events.
Yes, looking over the blogosphere, he has his rightwing partisans, and it might be added that part of Zell Miller’s doofusness may be a little overblown because of the noisy environment Miller and Matthews were in… We’re stuck in a sort of la-la land.