Now, in this current climate, who is it that’s throwing around these charges of no patriotism?

So when I post this quote to you, you might think that some Republican leader gave this speech about the anti-war left that’s doing everything they can to defeat the country, that’s redefining patriotism as hatred and dislike and disapproval of the country. But a Republican did not say these things.

It was Mr. Clinton. It was President Clinton in a graduation speech at Michigan State University, Spartan Stadium, East Lansing, Michigan at 1:30 in the afternoon on May the 5th of 1995. He was talking here about the Michigan militia. He tried to blame the Michigan militia, a whole bunch of people, for inciting such anti-government rhetoric that it inspired people like Timothy McVeigh to go out and blow up the Murrah building in Oklahoma City.

1995, the graduation address at Michigan State. “How dare you suggest that we in the freest nation on earth live in tyranny? How dare you call yourselves patriots and heroes?”

Now, right there, think about all the attacks the left has made about the warrantless wiretapping program, the Patriot Act, and they’re running around and they’ve got themselves convinced they live in a police state and that Bush is spying on them.

The left, they want to matter so much, and they’re me, me, me. Everything has to be about them. So if they were to hear Clinton talk to them, “How dare you suggest that we, in the freest nation on earth, live in tyranny? How dare you call yourselves patriots and heroes? I say to you, all of you, the members of the class of 1995, there’s nothing patriotic about hating your country.”

Who hates the country today?

Draw a line, put people on the left, put people on the right. Who hates the country today? It’s people on the left who hate the country today. Clinton is saying, “There’s nothing patriotic about hating your country or pretending that you can love your country but despise your government.”

Well, let me change this. How about pretending you can love your country but despise your military? “There’s nothing heroic about turning your back on America or ignoring your own responsibilities. If you want to preserve your own freedom, you must stand up for the freedom of others.”

Just to finish the Clinton quote. “You must also stand up for the rule of law. You cannot have freedom without the rule of law.”

Clinton Foundation:
Remarks by President Clinton at Michigan State University — May 5, 1995

In Response to:

The first is: what does victory Iraq look like and how long do you think it will take to get there? Is victory a strong stable secular democracy? What would the levels of violence need to be at in order to withdraw troops, roughly equivalent to American society, does it need to be lower or would something higher be acceptable? After the security situation was achieved, how many military bases in the country would we need? Could we get by with the four that we have or could we have less?

Based on these answers, what is your best guess on when that victory could be obtained? It is OK if it is a range. Tomorrow? 1 Year? 5 Years? 10 Years? Longer?

codesmithy

<special thanks, for the engaging comment!>
PL

————————————————————————————

A little generality to begin:

Anti-Americanism, whether in Europe or on the American left, stigmatizes America with all the imperialistic and racist ugliness of the Western past so that America becomes a kind of straw man, a construct of Western sin. (The Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo prisons were the focus of such stigmatization campaigns.) Once the stigma is in place, one need only be anti-American in order to be “good,” in order to have an automatic moral legitimacy and power in relation to America. (People as seemingly disparate as President Jacques Chirac and the Rev. Al Sharpton are devoted pursuers of the moral high ground to be had in anti-Americanism.) This formula is the most dependable source of power for today’s international left. Virtue and power by mere anti-Americanism. And it is all the more appealing since, unlike real virtues, it requires no sacrifice or effort–only outrage at every slight echo of the imperialist past.
…
Today words like “power” and “victory” are so stigmatized with Western sin that, in many quarters, it is politically incorrect even to utter them. For the West, “might” can never be right. And victory, when won by the West against a Third World enemy, is always oppression. But, in reality, military victory is also the victory of one idea and the defeat of another. Only American victory in Iraq defeats the idea of Islamic extremism.

But in today’s atmosphere of Western contrition, it is impolitic to say so.
…

Dr. Shelby Steele

So what’s happening now is that the very enemy that blew us up on 9/11 is facing us in Iraq (just to be clear here – Islamic extremism). We can’t cave in defeat and run out of there and say, “Hey guess what, we won, we got Saddam.” We are going to be setting ourselves up for future disasters. We will never be able to have any other nation trust us as an ally when we have to go in there again. If we pull out of there before we take care of this, we’re just going to have to do it sometime later at greater cost.

The left in this country says that military victory is meaningless in Iraq. Military victory doesn’t mean anything; it’s not solving the political situation. We need political victory, say the Democrats. Well, look what happened to our own left politically in this country. The military success of the surge, and what did it lead to? A political victory for the president in the Democrats’ own Senate and House. Now, if military success can lead to political success in the United States of America, then why can’t it in Iraq?

You’d have to say the success of the surge led to a political victory in this country.

Can we get rid of this term “the resistance”? Could we ban such terms as “guerrillas”, “insurgents” and such? Could we just call these people who they are? They are terrorists! And, of course, they’re gathering in Iraq. This is a battlefield. It’s a good thing they’re gathering in Iraq, and of course they’re trying to recruit people. Could we also stipulate here that war is hard? Could we remind you that two years after World War II ended, the Werewolves were still trying to disrupt our forces and the forces for good in Germany, and these were part of the old SS organized long before the defeat of Germany in World War II. We were in Germany seven or eight years postwar occupying it and getting it ready to go.

How long?

War is never “plottable” on a piece of paper or on a map. It never goes exactly as anybody thinks it’s going to go because nobody can predict the future, for one thing.

As long as it takes. It is very serious. This is the United States of America at war with Islamofascists. Just like your job, you do everything you have to do, whatever it takes to get it done, if you take it seriously.

We stay to get the job done, as long as it takes. I didn’t say forever. Nothing takes forever. That’s not possible. Nobody lives forever, no situation lasts forever, everything ends.

We determine how do we want it to end, in our favor or in our defeat?

In Response to:

Second, could you point me to another example in history in which this type of war strategy has worked? Arguments from history sort of stink because you always have to make arguments by analogy, but useful examples seem to be the American Revolution, American Reconstruction, American-Filipino War, Soviet-Afghan War and the Algerian War of Independence. Unfortunately, these examples seem to demonstrate that the insurgencies are eventually successful. So, I was curious if you could point to some counter examples where the perceived “occupational” power is victorious in establishing the victory result described above while maintaining conservative values of life, individual liberty and freedom for the people. Germany and Japan are not good example because they didn’t develop the types of resistance movements that we are currently seeing in Iraq to sabotage progress, or at least to the degree that we have seen. This might be controversial, so you don’t have to just take my word for it, you can look at a report put together by the Congressional Research Service called “U.S. Occupation Assistance: Iraq, Germany and Japan Compared” which concluded:

“The existence of an insurgency in Iraq which deliberately sabotages the economy and reconstruction efforts is an important consideration in comparing Iraq’s economic reconstruction requirements with those of post-war Germany and Japan, which had no resistance movements.”

codesmithy

————————————————————————-

<Special thanks, for the engaging comment!>

First off, I’d like to say; I am in no way a Military expert. Having said that, this is what I have learned and what I believe to be true.

A little generality to begin:

There is something rather odd in the way America has come to fight its wars since World War II.

For one thing, it is now unimaginable that we would use anything approaching the full measure of our military power (the nuclear option aside) in the wars we fight. And this seems only reasonable given the relative weakness of our Third World enemies in Vietnam and in the Middle East. But the fact is that we lost in Vietnam, and today, despite our vast power, we are only slogging along–if admirably–in Iraq against a hit-and-run insurgency that cannot stop us even as we seem unable to stop it. Yet no one–including, very likely, the insurgents themselves–believes that America lacks the raw power to defeat this insurgency if it wants to. So clearly it is America that determines the scale of this war. It is America, in fact, that fights so as to make a little room for an insurgency.

Certainly since Vietnam, America has increasingly practiced a policy of minimalism and restraint in war. And now this unacknowledged policy, which always makes a space for the enemy, has us in another long and rather passionless war against a weak enemy.

We’re the United States of America. What do we need to put up with this insurgency and these IEDs and these car bombs? We could win this war inside of two weeks to a month, but we refuse to, and that’s why this is so important, because we do fight these things in a minimalist fashion, and all the while even while this is happening we are told what a bunch of brutes and how unfair we are by the leftists in this country and the mainstream Media.
…

“In Iraq we are in two wars, one against an insurgency and another against the past — two fronts, two victories to win, one military, the other a victory of dissociation.”

Dr. Shelby Steele

I could not have said that better.

Can you win a war in which the populace is aiding the insurgency?

GENERAL ABIZAID: If everybody in Iraq was in the resistance, Prime Minister Allawi would not be trying to lead us — his nation — forward to a better future. If everybody in Iraq happened to be part of the resistance they wouldn’t be volunteering for the armed forces. We’ve got over a hundred thousand people that are trained and equipped now. That number is going up higher. There’s more people that are coming forward to fight for the future of Iraq than are fighting against it. So the constant drumbeat in Washington of a war that is being lost, that can’t be won, of a resistance that is out of control simply do not square with the facts on the ground. Yes, there is a resistance. Yes, it’s hard. But the truth of the matter is that Iraqis and Americans and other members of the coalition will face that resistance together — will, through a series of economic, political and military means, figure out how to defeat it and will move on to allow the elections to take place and a constitutional government to emerge.

I’d suggest you visit my “Good News from Iraq” post, to view how General Petraeus, who is now leading the fight, is making progress. As I stated earlier, I am not a Military expert, but I do believe in the US military. We are being led to victory by General Petraeus, a man with the experience and ability to accomplish the mission. In this new type of war, I trust the military to protect us.

Gen. Petraeus’s awards and decorations (too numerous to list all) include:

• Defense Distinguished Service Medal
• Two Distinguished Service Medals
• Two Defense Superior Service Medals
• Four Legions of Merit
• Bronze Star Medal for Valor
• State Department Superior Honor Award
• NATO Meritorious Service Medal
• Gold Award of the Iraqi Order of the Date Palm
• Master Parachutist wings
• Air Assault wings
• Ranger tab
• Combat Action Badge
• French parachutist wings
• British parachutist wings
• German parachutist wings

… and so many more.

As I said this is a New Type of global conflict. Difficult to give more examples. The world has changed as it always does, and military conflicts are no different. We must adapt, or parish. I believe Gen. Petraeus is adapting,

I understand the impatience, but is defeat an option?

Have you seen this Fox News poll?

Nearly one in five Democrats say the world will be better off if the United States loses the war. One in five — so like 20% — of the Democrats. What was the other one, 35% of Democrats think that Bush knew about 9/11, now we have 20% of Democrats think we’d be better off if we lost, the world would be better off if we lose the war.

Does this surprise anybody? Another way to look at this, though, is it means four out of five Democrats don’t think that, so where the hell are they?

Where the hell are they, and what are they saying?

Mark Twain had a quote;

“In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a brave and scarce man, hated and scorned. When the cause succeeds however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.”

One out of five Democrats.

By the way, 73% overall think it’s better if we win.

That’s still a scary low number, 73%, about three-fourths of the country, think that we’d be better off if we win.

Reference:

FOX News Poll: Nearly 1 in 5 Democrats Say World Will Be Better Off if U.S. Loses War

“The number of American troops and Iraqi civilians killed in the war fell in September to levels not seen in more than a year. The US military said the lower count was at least partly a result of new strategies and 30,000 additional forces deployed this year,”

i.e., the surge is working.

Also yesterday:

Locals are building cities up with oil revenue, as Bush said was happening. There has been a 40% decline in deaths, citizen deaths in Iraq during Ramadan.

Resource Link

Associated Press:

Iraqi Deaths Fall by 50 Percent