Please watch the video below and tell me if the two guys and one woman running this union "command post" could have resolved this issue in 30 seconds by simply saying, "Gee, I'm sorry. I am not a veteran and it just didn't occur to me how this would appear to those who have served, and the families and friends of those who died."
Then all they had to do was take their crap off the Wisconsin War Memorial.
But instead, they freakin' argue with a guy and his wife who point out how disrespectful they are being. Getting into a debate was not the right tack ... removing their crap from the memorial was the right tack.
This is just short of a 9 minute video and it is obvious there were breaks in the filming. But at the end, the junk is still pasted on the Wisconsin War Memorial to those who have died serving their state and country!
And the people who put it there continue to spew lip service, and lip, but no one took the 30 seconds necessary to rectify the situation. Speaking of which, how long have any of the 20-somethings featured in the video actually worked for anyone? They look like the social rejects I saw when I taught college, always seeming to be in the background of any demonstration, egging others on, but never in the classroom.
Inconsiderate, disrespectful, arrogant, pisant, twerps. And the public employees unions want mainstream America's respect and support? Show some to us first! Starting with the veterans, and especially those who died. Thanks to my friend and fellow Vietnam vet Larry Stimeling at http://thecesspoolofknowlege.blogspot.com/ for alerting me to this video.
From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli!
If Thomas Jefferson was any less of a man, or president, and did anything in 1803 other than stand up to the Barbary Pirates who were attacking American shipping for plunder and ransom we wouldn't have that line to the Marines Hymn would we?
Yet, in the evacuation of Libya this past week, including departures from the port city of Tripoli, America came off as the weakest, most insecure, whining, hand-wringing wimp on the entire international scene.
Where is the 6th Fleet - the massive US Naval presence that has reminded modern-day pirates and despots from one end of the Mediterranean to the other for decades that the resolution shown by our nation more than 200 years ago has not wavered?
Answer, it's gone. No carrier groups bristling with jet aircraft, missiles and big guns, no big cruisers, no helicopters, no landing craft, no battalions of Marines. Gone. Just a couple of small craft that can do little to enforce America's foreign policy objectives when attacked by a capable and determined aggressor.
Is our current foreign relations playbook the work of a Woody Allen wannabe suffering from a massive fit of depression? Can we be any more cloying, annoying, neurotic? Did you see the latest foreign relations debacle of the the Obama Administration?
Other nations sent in entire fleets of jumbo jets to evacuate thousands, and in the case of China, tens of thousands of their citizens lest they get caught up in the escalating internal violence between Libyan dictator Moammar Qaddafi and those seeking his overthrow. Great Britain sent a couple of warships to let The Leader know they could and would intervene if necessary; but our big tough State Department wimped out.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton explained that we didn't want to send warships because it might give the wrong message to Qaddafi, whatever that was! So Obama sent a ferryboat! A ferryboat for crying out loud!
And even after a grand total of about 600 Americans, representing most of our civilian presence there, were on board, the USS Rubber Duck sat at the dock for three days because a storm on the Mediterranean was too strong and it couldn't risk going to sea! Meanwhile, some 4,500 Chinese workers in two other ships did leave and despite the weather made it safely to Crete while Americans stayed in port, fighting off seasickness.
So why didn't we make a stronger statement to Qaddafi and the rest of the Arab world in general, considering that it is exploding in violence and rage?
Well, the once mighty 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean has a command structure that has been merged with other NATO forces, but generally all I can find on its capabilities is the USS Mount Whitney, a 40-year-old command vessel that arguably is really great on communications but not exactly what I'd pick to enforce American policies. I mean, it probably can listen in on Qaddafi's thoughts, but then what? It has only enough armament to defend itself until the big guys get there, but now there aren't any big guys.
I guess we could reassign ships from elsewhere, but that can takes days, even weeks, and it should be obvious that if we are called upon to do anything in the Mediterranean, it probably will be a "WE NEED YOU NOW" situation. So our options apparently are nonexistent.
How's that for a modern reminder of the determination that has kept our flag flying and trade routes open in that area for more than 200 years - world wars notwithstanding?
It probably was our absence from the Mediterranean that encouraged Iranian dictator Mamoud Ahmadinejad to send warships through the Suez Canal and along the coast of Israel last week. No chance of bumping into our Navy, it wasn't around.
Imagine how the career guys must feel after decades of going eyeball to eyeball with the big guns of the Russian fleet, now reduced to avoiding gunboats owned by crackpot extremists.
While the rest of the world was flexing its international muscles the US was sitting this one out complaining of a bad back. Pathetic, absolutely pathetic. I thought I'd put a little historical perspective on this so I dug up the following records on our history with Africa's north coast.
From the Library of Congress, American Memory collection, The Thomas Jefferson Papers http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/jefferson_papers/mtjprece.html : "From what I learn from the temper of my countrymen and their tenaciousness of their money," Jefferson added in a December 26, 1786, letter to the president of Yale College, Ezra Stiles, "it will be more easy to raise ships and men to fight these pirates into reason, than money to bribe them."
When Jefferson became president in 1801 he refused to accede to Tripoli's demands for an immediate payment of $225,000 and an annual payment of $25,000. The pasha of Tripoli then declared war on the United States.
Although as secretary of state and vice president he had opposed developing an American navy capable of anything more than coastal defense, President Jefferson dispatched a squadron of naval vessels to the Mediterranean.
As he declared in his first annual message to Congress: "To this state of general peace with which we have been blessed, one only exception exists. Tripoli, the least considerable of the Barbary States, had come forward with demands unfounded either in right or in compact, and had permitted itself to denounce war, on our failure to comply before a given day. The style of the demand admitted but one answer. I sent a small squadron of frigates into the Mediterranean. . . ."
Jefferson's battle with the Barbary pirates was not easy. It continued after his presidency, requiring two wars, the second one in 1815, to finally put an exclamation point on the US refusal to pay annual tribute and its distaste for ransom. Not everyone agreed with him, and as in any war, there were losses as well as victories.
But Jefferson's decision in 1803 to send naval forces, including Marines, to Tripoli was the starting point for more than two hundred years of historical precedence that apparently is now back to its starting point. We can only wonder why, because I haven't heard a thing out of any news organization in the world that explains our deterioration from a strong, reliable, world-class ally, to the sniveling Caspar Milquetoast image we now project.
Where is Thomas Jefferson when we need him? Where is Teddy Roosevelt's Big Stick? Where are Truman, Eisenhower, Lincoln? Gone. All Gone. Along with America's prestige, pride and world presence.
You know what happens to the schoolyard wimps don't you? Sure you do. They become targets of the bullies. And there always are bullies. On the world stage bullies don't respond to peer mediation. They laugh at it and kick the crap out of the facilitators.
If experience is any teacher, America better get back into the gym.
The world of international yachting, to which I do NOT belong, is reacting with understandable shock and horror over the brutal slaying of four around-the-world sailors, two men and two women, by Somali pirates today.
The four were taken hostage as so many others have been, and like so many others were being held for ransom. A US Navy patrol boat was shadowing the pirates, but had taken no action, according to news reports, when the pirates suddenly launched a rocket-propelled grenade at the Navy, then gunfire erupted on board.
According to the Associated Press, Jean and Scott Adam of Marina del Rey near Los Angeles, along with Bob Riggle and Phyllis Macay of Seattle were taken hostage on Friday several hundred miles south of Oman. The Adams had been sailing around the world since December 2004 with a 58-foot yacht full of Bibles to distribute to remote regions, and they were joined by Riggle and Macay, who left Seattle about 10 months ago, the AP article stated.
Did you catch that little item about the Adams and their missionary work in the above paragraph? Why do you supposed they were slaughtered with no warning and no apparent reason? Because they were Christians sailing off the coast of a Muslim continent where slaughtering Christians is routine, for revenge, for fun, for sport, for control and for profit.
World governments, as in the Untied Nations - misspelling on purpose - have been sitting around wringing their hands for two decades over the atrocities occurring in Somalia and other African countries, but as usual, doing nothing for fear of offending the so easily offended Muslims in the areas.
Elsewhere I found that 14 - count them, fourteen - attempts to restore a central Somalian government have failed since 1991, and a 15th one is now floundering around impotently. The United Nations is throwing all its power and influence behind the administration of President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed in hopes of dampening the religious fervor creating so much havoc in Somalia and elsewhere around the world.
Ahmed is described by the fawners and sycophants in the UN and the mainstream media as "a moderate Islamist with widespread support inside and outside Somalia," but he is opposed by powerful pro-al Qaeda militant Islamists and he actually only has an office and a title because they let him.
In the light of today's tragedy, take a look at the video below pitting US Congressman Allen West against an Islamic propagandist.
I found the video at Pamela Geller's Atlas Shrugs website. http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2011/02/allen-west-takes-on-cair.html
On You Tube it is titled CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) Confronts Allen West. Pamela retitled it Allen West Takes on CAIR: "Don't Try and Blow Sunshine Up My Butt!"
After watching the video I agree with Pamela's title. It is a far more accurate reflection of what really transpired.
Allen West is a man who deserves respects, he has EARNED it. I hope he runs for president someday.
And CAIR's propaganda should bring a tear to the eye of die hard communists and Nazis. Watch the video. Decide for yourself.
