Monday, January 2

With Friends Like This, Who Needs Enemies?

Have the New York Times and Russell Feingold committed treason?

You bet. The same kind of treason that John Kerry committed when he met with the Viet Cong in Paris while our nation was at war and he was a private citizen.

"The president does not get to pick and choose which laws he wants to follow," Sen. Feingold said in a statement recently. "He is a president, not a king."

Sen. Russell Feingold is a Democrat from Wisconsin. Obviously he either has blinders on or he has neglected to learn American history. The inference that President Bush has overstepped his authority by ordering wire taps on citizens who are contacting the enemy is intentionally emotional and mindless rhetoric designed to inflame the uninformed. It also is downright slander. His statement says that the people must not be protected by the President. Perhaps we are to protect ourselves? That didn't work on 9/11.

Feingold has forgotten that President Bush took an oath -- twice -- to "protect and defend" the American people.

Feingold has forgotten that we face an enemy who has already killed thousands of Americans, the major portion of that number in one single attack.

Feingold has forgotten that every wartime President has had to bend the rules to defend this country and when those wars were over, the rules guaranteeing those temporarily "lost" freedoms were promptly and strongly reinstated.

Feingold has forgotten that "loose lips sink ships" and he and the New York Times, who was the first to "out" the story have alerted Al Quaida and others who are lying in wait to attack us to one of our most important homeland defenses. Will Feingold and the Times remember that if we are attacked again? Of course not. Never mind that they have weakened our capacity to listen to our enemy's plans by publicly announcing what we were doing. They who undermined our defense will be the loudest to point to the Oval Office and shout "j'accuse."

We're not that dumb, Feingold and NYT. We know history. We know what is necessary in wartime (and as long as people are willing to attack us, we are at war). There are the self-serving sheep among us who either want their 15 minutes of fame and don't have the talent to get it any other way or they truly wish the downfall of our way of life who will take up the cry.

They are the ones who are prolonging the war. They are the ones who bear the blood of our troops on their consciences --those who would tie the President's hands behind his back to allow the radical Muslims to attack us again.

You, Feingold and the NY Times, are either stupid or, if you have your way, guilty of a new kind of treason because one definition of treason is aiding and abetting the enemy. To tell Al Quaida that we are tapping their phone lines and have actually stopped their plots by doing so is an act of treason.

With citizens like those, who needs enemies?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Dear Mookie;
I enjoyed your response to my post and I thank you for your interest.
It is not at all unusual for a President to circumvent certain laws that restrain him in wartime. Roosevelt did it; Lincoln did it -- in fact, just about every wartime President did it. When it is necessary to protect the American people and our way of life, the President would be irresponsible and remiss if he didn't do whatever was needed.
In this particular case, the communications that were tapped were between known terrorists and citizens. If we had had that capability before 9/11 we might not have lost 3,000 people in the World Trade Center and aother 2,000+ in a war.
The President should be able to do whatever is necessary to fight this war without telling the American people what he's doing (because Al Quaida is listening to everything he says and besides, it's poor military strategy to give the enemy your plans).
I was alive during the second world war and I am here to tell you that it most definitely WAS okay to incarcerate Japanese citizens at that time. You probably also don't know that the Japanese actually bombed Santa Barbara -- with ship to shore missiles -- because it isn't taught in the schools but I know someone who was there when it happened. There was no way to tell which Japanese/Americans were patriotic and which weren't. A friend of my husband's was incarcerated at that time and even he agrees that it most definitely was the thing to do.
Congress has no business trying to run a war. There are too many of them and they have proved again and again that their interest is not the well being of the country but their major campaign contributors. The President most certainly should take the reigns of government and do whatever is necessary to fight this war and protect our citizens.
The threat of a long-term war on terror is even more reason to give up a few freedoms now so that we don't lose them all forever in the war. War means sacrifice if you want to win. It takes courage and determination and persistence as well. Frankly, I don't think your generation has the guts to see it through. And the terrorists don't think so either.