Casualty Of Peace

The Los Angeles Times/Chicago Tribune ran a rather disturbing story today (HT the Logical Husband" about a mentally ill young man and a years long deception that he ran.

Retired Marine Capt. Rick Duncan carried a list of phone numbers of those in the business of helping veterans. One was for the VA clinic in Colorado Springs, and in 2008 he pressed it upon Mike Flaherty, a young Army veteran struggling with depression.

He understood, Duncan told Flaherty. He'd been to Iraq three times. Attacked in Fallouja, he'd returned home with a metal plate in his head and a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Except that "Captain" Duncan was no captain - nor did he serve in Iraq or even the Marines. "Capt" Duncan was actually Rick Strandloff - an anti-war protester and convicted felon who is also bipolar. I want to go on the record now and say that his having bipolar disorder should not be used as an excuse for his bad behavior or thought of as "normal" behavior. I have a very, VERY dear friend back in MN who is bipolar and while she does have some things that she struggles with, this kind of deception is not even close to being this egregious. I have also learned from this dear friend that when you are dealing with bipolar disorder, nothing is "normal" - they are all individuals with individual brain chemistry misfires.

All that said, I live in a military family. My husband served in the Army as does my brother in law. My late father in law was in the Air Force and was buried with full military honors. My father tried to enlist, but could not due to health issues. The list goes on and on. Besides being married to the military, I was employed by the Army as support staff. Needless to say, the military and military issues are near and dear to our household.

The reporter does a fantastic, indepth job of reporting this story and creates, in Mr. Strandloff, a compelling and sympathetic figure. However, buried deep in the story is a brief comment by Mr. Strandloff that belies his claims of "I didn't know what I was doing or why I did it"....

"Any good production has to have a compelling character," he said.

And that in a nutshell shows that he knew a little more about what he was doing then he led on. It should also be noted that this is not the first time that the anti war movement was taken in by a fake. Michelle Malkin has run a number of stories by people claiming to be anti-war veterans. While I have no doubt that there are real "anti-war" veterans out there (heaven knows that no soldier really WANTS to go to war) the sheer number of these stories leads one on the outside to suspect that the anti-war movement wouldn't know the real thing if jumped out in front of them. Either that or...

Yet Strandlof also said that he had a greater effect in his antiwar efforts as Duncan the veteran than he ever did as Strandlof the liberal protester.

Does the end justify the means? And if it does, why have the anti-war protesters been so silent since January 20? If you are against wars after all.....

Ennui

Pity poor Susan...she is sorely disappointed.

A few weeks back I rode my bike to the State Capitol for a peace rally. It had
everything a rally should have -- labor, veterans and Gold Star mothers, respected speakers, a sunny day -- except people.
It was subdued and surreal, like the final scene from "On the Beach," the 1959 movie about nuclear annihilation, in which banners flutter over an outdoor stage and flyers scuttle across the flattened grass and no one is there.

In her typical over-reactionary style, Susan then goes on to talk about the peace rally that flopped and her hyper-imaginative reasons why it flopped.

OK, I exaggerate. Our rally had maybe 300 to 400 people, still pretty much
alive, but it seemed we all had an ashy coat of hopelessness.
In Ken Burns' recent series, "The War," a veteran says the military knew that the longest a person could endure combat before going totally nuts was 240 days. We've been in Iraq roughly 1,650 days now, and though God knows most of us haven't been asked to do much more than sell off our children's future, I think we're all going a little nuts.

I can think of a few folks who think you are already there Susan and this column does little to disuade the impression. Not once does it cross her mind that maybe, just maybe the people of Minnesota don't agree with her or that maybe, just mayber we have more important things to do on a sunny October afternoon.


She then descends into full scale drama queen mode.

We nod out as Hillary's machine rolls on toward the inevitable, fed by media reports of -- the inevitable. And as 2008 approaches, those of the liberal persuasion are filled with a familiar dread.
We agonize as Congress squabbles over who is more unpatriotic for calling which members of the military more unpatriotic -- and our president assures us that the American government does not torture people.
Iraq is a never-ending nightmare, and the Decider's mind seems decided on something catastrophic for Iran. We're drowning in debt.
Our health-care system is great -- for those who can afford it. It's October and
80 degrees outside. Creepy.

It must be horrible in Lenfesteyland. I don't think it is a place I would ever want to visit....so dark...so depressing....so not based in reality.

Then again, maybe I should take heart. Maybe if the ennui overtakes Susan and her ilk, they will stay home next November and then......

Why counter protest?

Conservatives will be forgiven for asking "why bother counter-protesting the anti-war crowd? It's not going to change anyone's mind and the local press will never report on it." The answer is simple and the Star Tribune (of all places) actually reported on it.

Before he was deployed to Iraq in 2005, as anti-war sentiment spread around
the country, Minnesota National Guardsman Bryan McDonough asked his parents to
promise that they would never "disrespect" his decision to serve.

Last week, 10 months after their 22-year-old son was killed near
Fallujah, Thomas and Renee McDonough made good on that pledge, rallying on
Capitol Hill with hundreds of other military families from around the nation.

"It's really about what our son told us," said Thomas McDonough of
Hugo. "He believed in it." I would venture to guess that every one of us here
knows at least one soldier who has not only been in Iraq but that also believe
in the mission that they were sent there to perform. I am blessed to know more
than a few who know what progress is being made and I am in awe of their
accomplishments.

The Star Tribune then went on to report something that I am sure stuck in their craw just a little.

Minnesota, like much of the nation, polls almost 2-1 against the war. And
Sen. Norm Coleman, a Minnesota Republican facing reelection next year, has been
looking for a middle ground in the debate.

Yet the nation's leading "pro-victory" groups, Vets for Freedom and
Families United for Our Troops and Their Mission, are led by Minnesotans. Peter
Hegseth, who heads Vets for Freedom, has become the national TV face of pro-war
veterans; Merrilee Carlson, who lost a son in Iraq, has become one of the
nation's leading "Gold Star" mothers.

"It is the Silent Majority no longer," said Carlson, who lives in Hastings
and serves as president of the 55,000-strong Families United group. "It's too
important for us to stay quiet."

I first heard Merrilee Carlson speak at John Kline's April town hall meeting. Her words were inspiring yet the anti-war partisans in the crowd refused to acknowledge the sacrifice that this woman made, sending her son off to war half a world away. Peter Hegseth was a frequent correspondent with the Powerline guys so he is well known to many of their readers. What many may not know is that TN's own Dave Thul is also a member of Vets for Freedom. All three of these wonderful people have helped inspire me to "get off of the couch" to join the fight.

It is past time for those who do not agree with the "withdrawal at all costs crowd" to get up, get out and make our voices heard in every way possible. We need to let the vocal anti-war folks know that they do not speak for all Americans and that we do get a say in the direction this country moves in, just as much as they do. Then maybe we can have an honest, realistic dialog on where we go and how we get there.

Playing with puppets

He who pays the piper calls the tune....another one of those quaint old sayings that my dear old grandma used to say to me at odd (to my addled teen-aged brain) times. That saying came to mind as I was catching up on a week's worth of reading today.

In the Hell Hath No Fury sweepstakes, groups like MoveOn.org are gearing up to
take on a new set of perceived traitors in their midst--Democrats who have
acknowledged some success from the troop surge in Iraq.
Chief among the
targets is Washington Congressman Brian Baird, whose indiscretion was
recognizing progress on the ground, despite having initially opposed the surge
and having opposed the war in the first place. After a recent trip to Iraq, Mr.
Baird said: "One of the things that gets very little attention is that virtually
every other country I visited says it would be a mistake to pull out now."
We hope he took his flak jacket home from Baghdad. MoveOn is rolling out an
ad this week in Mr. Baird's Washington district, in which a former soldier tells
of being shot at in 2003 by the Iraqis he had fought to liberate and calls
America's continued presence in the country "wrong, immoral and irresponsible."
What does this have to do with the wisdom--or lack thereof--of the current
strategy? Nada, which tells you something about MoveOn's honesty.
The group doesn't aim to engage in debate, but to punish and silence
Democrats who dare to think for themselves. There's a pattern here:
When John Dingell contradicted party orthodoxy on global warming and auto
mileage standards this year, MoveOn ran ads in his Michigan district calling the
81-year-old Congressman "Dingellsaurus."

Emphasis mine. It is obvious that the lessons are being heard as Congress gets back to work.




That is New York's Senior Senator Charles Schumer speaking in the Senate on Wednesday. Oh to be sure it was part of a much longer speech (Sweetness and Light has the transcript) but the key - the shout out to his Move On puppeteers was this:

And let me be clear: the violence in Anbar has gone down despite the surge, not
because of the surge. The inability of American soldiers to protect these tribes from al Qaeda said to these tribes, “We have to fight al Qaeda ourselves.”
It wasn’t that the surge brought peace here. It was that the warlords had to create a
temporary peace here on their own. And that is because there was no one else
there protecting them.

Emphasis mine. It is obvious that Senator Schumer (as head of the DSCC) recognizes that he who paid the piper is indeed calling the tune and that is something that should worry us all.....

Debating the debate

Tony Blankley is one of those Washington pundits that does actually manage to maintain an air of impartiality in his columns. He points out the abject insanity on both sides of the political aisle with great regularity. His latest column looks at Monday nights debate of Democratic Presidential contenders. He finds the candidates "wanting".

"Most of the rest of the debate involved the candidates showing little genuine emotion or conviction and no new ideas. Questions about healthcare were handled with outrage at President George Bush and a total evasion of the challenges of actual cost controls (Medicare, for example, is unfunded through 2070 to the sum of 40 trillion dollars or more). When one questioner asked the candidates whether they would cut benefits or raise taxes, they all agreed that neither was really necessary. Although, admittedly, Obama looked far more sincere as he emoted about the terrible problem than did the others."

He saves his harshest words for the candidates stances on Iraq.

"Bragging at how quickly they could retreat seems to be a peculiarly liberal inclination. While, as I recall, conservative little boys practice quick draw with their cap guns while playing cowboys and Indians, apparently liberal little boys practice how fast they can throw up their hands to surrender to the guys in the black hats."

He also reminds us of the possible consequences should we just "pack our things and go" as the Democratic candidates are proposing.

"Removing 250,000 Americans from Iraq over even a year on perhaps 20,000 flatbed trucks through a sniper-, mortar- and road-side-bomb-infested two-lane road may result in more casualties than anyone wants to imagine."

Blankley chastises a Democratic Party that is (in his words) "hell bent on surrender". The more the Democratic contendersrace to the left to mollify the anti-war base, the more that this statement becomes the truth. Hopefully more Americans will start seeing that as we race toward the 2008 election.

Hypocrisy - thy name is....

Former Senator Bob Kerrey (D-NE) had a piece in the Wall Street Journal last week that got little attention - and it deserved more than it got.

"Let me restate the case for this Iraq war from the U.S. point of view. The U.S. led an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein because Iraq was rightly seen as a threat following Sept. 11, 2001. For two decades we had suffered attacks by radical Islamic groups but were lulled into a false sense of complacency because all previous attacks were "over there." It was our nation and our people who had been identified by Osama bin Laden as the "head of the snake." But suddenly Middle Eastern radicals had demonstrated extraordinary capacity to reach our shores.
As for Saddam, he had refused to comply with numerous U.N. Security Council resolutions outlining specific requirements related to disclosure of his weapons programs. He could have complied with the Security Council resolutions with the greatest of ease. He chose not to because he was stealing and extorting billions of dollars from the U.N. Oil for Food program.
No matter how incompetent the Bush administration and no matter how poorly they chose their words to describe themselves and their political opponents, Iraq was a larger national security risk after Sept. 11 than it was before. And no matter how much we might want to turn the clock back and either avoid the invasion itself or the blunders that followed, we cannot. The war to overthrow Saddam Hussein is over. What remains is a war to overthrow the government of Iraq. " (emphasis mine)

Senator Kerrey then goes on to chastise people like Senator Biden who, while condemning US intervention in an Iraqi Civil War, have no problems interjecting the US into other Civil Wars around the world.

"The critics who bother me the most are those who ordinarily would not be on the side of supporting dictatorships, who are arguing today that only military intervention can prevent the genocide of Darfur, or who argued yesterday for military intervention in Bosnia, Somalia and Rwanda to ease the sectarian violence that was tearing those places apart. "

I have long wondered how the left could justify that position. In the spirit of disclosure, I support us being in Iraq AND into the Sudan in order to stop the atrocities in Darfur. Maybe the Democrats in DC need to think about their positions on these issues and answer the question "why are they so out of line?"

Final notes on the town hall meeting

This is all personal opinion and observation!

When I arrived last night, the protesters were already out in force. I think the best sign (or at least the most ironic) was this one.

You want to defend "life" eh? How do you feel about killing unborn babies?

Across from the line of protesters was these two brave youngsters (he's 13, she's 11) who supported the troops!

Brave kids!


Well, if Heny Kissinger says it's hopeless......

This is an overview of what we saw coming in. The folks handing out literature were to the right - in front of the door.

I mentioned in the first post the rules.....one of the hand-outs (from a group called CD2 Patriots for Peace) welcomed everyone to the event and as that everyone show respect towards one another. Here are a few examples of the "respect" that the anti-war folks showed toward those who disagreed with them. Besides the one that accused Merrilee Carlson and Sgt Thul's representatives of "spin", there were instances (especially during the question and answer session) where those who spoke in support of the troops were greeted with chuckles, chortles and snorts of derision. One woman who spoke, asked if anyone had seen the movie "Obsession" as was shown on Fox Television. The mention of Fox caused the lefties to laugh - loudly enough that you could not hear the questioner speak - some respect! When the speaker mentioned that she was thankful for the alternative media, the Code Pinker next to me said "OHMIGOD". I mentioned their reaction to the suggestion of rolling back the tax cuts - hoots and hollers? Well the Code Pinker next to me eagerly hissed "YES" at that suggestion. When the Iraqi national was speaking - pleading for our help - her reaction was to sigh heavily and roll her eyes up! Lots of respect for opposing points of view eh?

All in all, the town hall meeting was very informative. I learned a lot (about the new strategy) and I also learned a lot about the anti-war movement and what I learned was not heartening at all. I learned that the anti-war movement is opportunistic and regardless of their protestations, they do not care about the troops execpt as props in their agenda. And to me, that was the saddest lesson of all.