On
the Dick Cavett Show, June 30th, 1971, John Kerry,
in his self appointed role of foreign policy sage,
was asked his opinion as to what would occur if
the U.S. withdrew from Southeast Asia. An action
of appeasement, retreat and surrender for which
he, Jane Fonda and their fellow apparatchiks, on
the extreme limousine left, salivated. He expounded
that there would be no bloodbath, and that, at most,
five thousand might be killed.
After
the U.S. withdrawal, millions died in the communist
purges, which followed in Vietnam, Cambodia and
Laos. Whole ethnic groups were eliminated. There
were 1.4 million refugees. Tens of thousands of
Boat People died on the high seas.
Substitute
“Iraq” for “Vietnam” and a horrifying
scenario presents itself: Do we really want John
Kerry directing the War on Terror and dictating
U.S. foreign policy???
Nothing
in Senator Kerry’s legislative record suggests
that he has become any wiser over the intervening
years. After being wrong on Vietnam in the 1970s,
he was wrong on Central America in the 1980s. He
wrongly opposed President Reagan’s European
policies, which brought down the Iron Curtain. In
the 1990s, he was wrong on Gulf War One. He was
complicit in the appeasement and negligence of the
Clinton years, which bequeathed us September 11th.
In 2004, he is wrong on the War on Terror and wrong
on the battle for Iraq, in particular. In the quest
to get elected, like a true chameleon, he tries
to sound like a determined hawk. But his evasiveness,
elusiveness, indecisiveness and spinelessness accumulate
to the wrong “plan”, at the wrong time,
for the right war.
It
is obviously a revelation to Kerry that war is an
unpredictable business. As the eminent military
tactician General Carl Von Clausewitz expounded,
“War is the province of chance”. War plans
go out the window once the first shot is fired.
General Dwight Eisenhower recognized this fickleness,
when he prepared to accept responsibility for the
potential failure of D Day. In December 1944, during
the Battle of the Bulge, when the Allies were temporarily
pushed on the defensive, is there any doubt that
Senator Kerry and his ilk would have been clamoring
for a U.S. retreat from Europe???
The
senator believes that the U.S is shouldering an
unnecessary share of the burden in Iraq. He endeavors
to persuade us that, if elected, he will magically
and equitably reapportion the burden. Earth to John
Kerry! In every UN, Allied or Coalition effort since
December 7th 1941, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf, the
Balkans, etc. the United States has shouldered 95%
of the burden, both in terms of manpower and resources.
Our consistent, reliable allies have always been
the United Kingdom and Australia. Without America,
it just does not happen. We are the only game in
town!
On Saturday last, Congressman Peter King, having
just returned from Iraq, told a group of Irish Americans
at a Yonkers gathering that the evidence on the
ground overwhelmingly indicates the U.S. is winning
the war in Iraq. Shock! The media, replete as it
is with Dan Rathers, ABC memos, “October surprises”,
all furthering transparent partisan agendas, is
not presenting a true picture. Three quarters of
Iraq is taking the first steps towards democracy
and prosperity in an atmosphere of relative normality.
Although
all our soldiers’ lives are sacred, and one
death is one death too many, the brutal, yet, welcome,
reality is that at 700 combat casualties, the United
States is achieving this victory at a very low price.
In the face of the Senator Kerry’s whining
negativity, a sense of perspective is illuminating.
In
the spring of 1944, while preparing for the European
invasion, seven hundred Allied troops were killed
in a single training exercise on Slapton Sands,
southern England. On D Day itself, the 82nd Airborne
lost close to 500 men in one hour, capturing a single
causeway. In the early 1990s, approximately 2000
New Yorkers, a year, were being murdered on the
watch of Kerry supporter, Mayor David Dinkins. And
of course, on 9/11, after eight years of Clintonian
negligence, we lost 3,000 Americans in one day
An
experienced background investigator will vouch that
the past is the best indicator of the present. Certainly,
there are alarming indicators in the senator’s
history. His four-month Vietnamese combat tour is
shrouded in enough doubts to raise serious negative
implications about his character. These doubts could
easily be resolved if he was to follow Dubya’s
lead and authorize the release of all pertinent
files.
When
Kerry returned from Vietnam, he became a prominent
member of a radical anti war group, Vietnam Veterans
Against the War, a group, which seriously considered
assassinating members of Congress. As a naval reserve
officer, during wartime, he went to Paris and treasonably
treated with the North Vietnamese enemy. In doing
so, he also illegally endeavored to conduct U.S.
foreign policy.
In
denigrating U.S. servicemen and testifying to fabricated
war crimes before Congress, Senator Kerry gave “aid
and comfort” to the enemy. His words and actions
were used by NVA torturers to demoralize American
POWs, like Senator John McCain. They seriously undermined
the war effort and increased debilitating societal
divisions on the domestic front.
Those
Democratic partisans, who in 2000 sought to derail
Bush’s presidential bid on a twenty five year
old DWI charge, would like Americans to dismiss
Kerry’s treachery as a youthful peccadillo.
In the name of justice, decency and honor that is
impossible. To do so would cheapen the office of
the presidency, and, it would be a grievous insult
to all U.S. military personnel, past and present,
especially those who never came home. For a nation
that is in the grips of a gargantuan struggle with
Islamo fascism, it would be criminally negligent
and grossly irresponsible to put a whinging, indecisive,
defeatist in the office of commander in chief. It
would be an odious betrayal of our nation and everything
for which it stands.
Patrick Hurley, is the president of the Regular
Republican Club 30th Ad, in the Irish American neighborhoods
of Woodside, Sunnyside and Maspeth, in the borough
of Queens, New York City. He a member of the Queens
County Executive of the Republican Party and is
active in Irish American affairs.
