thedrifter
02-12-05, 09:45 PM
Ted Kennedy: Iraq war's Jane Fonda
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Posted: February 12, 2005
1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Peter Parisi
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© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com
The votes have been cast – if not yet fully counted – and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy owes the brave people of Iraq a profound apology. Some 8 million Iraqis on Jan. 30 defied terrorists' threats of violence and death to cast their ballots for a more hopeful future than Mr. Kennedy was willing to grant them. In so doing, Iraqis, who hadn't voted in free elections in a half-century, gave the lie to the Massachusetts Democrat's nakedly partisan rant three days before the balloting that the war that made the voting possible was "a colossal failure, a continuing quagmire." In fact, although about three dozen people – minus the eight suicide bombers – died in election-related violence, the terrorists' vow to wreak maximum havoc nationwide to minimize the turnout and thereby render the vote illegitimate was what was the true "colossal failure."
Indeed, Iraqi voters gave the collective finger, a purple dye-stained finger, to the thugs and assassins – and to Mr. Kennedy, whose diatribe at Johns Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies Jan. 27 gave demagoguery a bad name. For Mr. Kennedy to characterize the Iraq war as "Bush's Vietnam" in advance of the balloting served only to give propaganda aid and comfort to terror mastermind Abu Musab Zarqawi and his henchmen. But beyond that, it grossly misrepresents the Vietnam War – specifically, the U.S. conduct of the war and the lessons thereof.
North Vietnamese Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap admitted that the January 1968 Tet Offensive was a disastrous defeat for the Communists – not for the United States, as it was portrayed in the U.S. media – and that in its wake, Hanoi was on the verge of surrendering. More tellingly, Gen. Giap acknowledged that it was the U.S. domestic anti-war movement that kept the North going. In other words, the very people who claimed they only wanted an end to the killing were actually responsible for prolonging the war for several years and by tens of thousands of deaths.
Zarqawi is no doubt aware of, and encouraged by, that sordid chapter of our history, and with the likes of Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya transmitting his remarks across the Middle East, Mr. Kennedy has become the Jane Fonda (the Lt. John Kerry?) of the Iraq war. It could be argued that not only are his remarks not likely to bring about an end to the bloodletting in Iraq, but rather, considerably prolong it by giving the terrorists hope that the United States will, in the late Sen. George Aiken's infamous Vietnam-era formulation, "declare victory and get out."
Leaving aside that it was President John F. Kennedy who got the United States into the Vietnam War in the first place, Sen. Kennedy's screed is the antithesis of his late brother's famous credo from his Jan. 20, 1961, inaugural address: "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty."
If anything, Sen. Kennedy's shameful stance more closely mirrors that of his father, Joseph P. Kennedy, who as FDR's ambassador to Great Britain during World War II was the chief administration proponent of appeasement of Hitler and the Nazis. While the 1,400 U.S. troops whose lives have been lost in the nearly two years since Operation Iraqi Freedom was launched is sad and lamentable, one can only be grateful that Ted Kennedy was not in the Senate during World War II, when during the Battle of the Bulge alone, 19,000 U.S. troops died in six weeks' time. If he had been, much of Europe might well be speaking German today.
But perhaps Mr. Kennedy's most irresponsible and demonstrably false pre-election remark was his drawing of a moral equivalence between our troops and the terrorists. "Our military and the insurgents are fighting for the same thing: the hearts and minds of the people," he said, "and that is a battle we are not winning."
Apart from the fact that the suicide bombers – seven of whom on election day were Saudis, while only one was an Iraqi – are more interested in losing spleens and intestines than in winning hearts and minds, the Iraqi voters showed whose side they were on – with their index fingers.
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Peter Parisi is a slot editor with the Washington Times.
Ellie
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Posted: February 12, 2005
1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Peter Parisi
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com
The votes have been cast – if not yet fully counted – and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy owes the brave people of Iraq a profound apology. Some 8 million Iraqis on Jan. 30 defied terrorists' threats of violence and death to cast their ballots for a more hopeful future than Mr. Kennedy was willing to grant them. In so doing, Iraqis, who hadn't voted in free elections in a half-century, gave the lie to the Massachusetts Democrat's nakedly partisan rant three days before the balloting that the war that made the voting possible was "a colossal failure, a continuing quagmire." In fact, although about three dozen people – minus the eight suicide bombers – died in election-related violence, the terrorists' vow to wreak maximum havoc nationwide to minimize the turnout and thereby render the vote illegitimate was what was the true "colossal failure."
Indeed, Iraqi voters gave the collective finger, a purple dye-stained finger, to the thugs and assassins – and to Mr. Kennedy, whose diatribe at Johns Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies Jan. 27 gave demagoguery a bad name. For Mr. Kennedy to characterize the Iraq war as "Bush's Vietnam" in advance of the balloting served only to give propaganda aid and comfort to terror mastermind Abu Musab Zarqawi and his henchmen. But beyond that, it grossly misrepresents the Vietnam War – specifically, the U.S. conduct of the war and the lessons thereof.
North Vietnamese Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap admitted that the January 1968 Tet Offensive was a disastrous defeat for the Communists – not for the United States, as it was portrayed in the U.S. media – and that in its wake, Hanoi was on the verge of surrendering. More tellingly, Gen. Giap acknowledged that it was the U.S. domestic anti-war movement that kept the North going. In other words, the very people who claimed they only wanted an end to the killing were actually responsible for prolonging the war for several years and by tens of thousands of deaths.
Zarqawi is no doubt aware of, and encouraged by, that sordid chapter of our history, and with the likes of Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya transmitting his remarks across the Middle East, Mr. Kennedy has become the Jane Fonda (the Lt. John Kerry?) of the Iraq war. It could be argued that not only are his remarks not likely to bring about an end to the bloodletting in Iraq, but rather, considerably prolong it by giving the terrorists hope that the United States will, in the late Sen. George Aiken's infamous Vietnam-era formulation, "declare victory and get out."
Leaving aside that it was President John F. Kennedy who got the United States into the Vietnam War in the first place, Sen. Kennedy's screed is the antithesis of his late brother's famous credo from his Jan. 20, 1961, inaugural address: "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty."
If anything, Sen. Kennedy's shameful stance more closely mirrors that of his father, Joseph P. Kennedy, who as FDR's ambassador to Great Britain during World War II was the chief administration proponent of appeasement of Hitler and the Nazis. While the 1,400 U.S. troops whose lives have been lost in the nearly two years since Operation Iraqi Freedom was launched is sad and lamentable, one can only be grateful that Ted Kennedy was not in the Senate during World War II, when during the Battle of the Bulge alone, 19,000 U.S. troops died in six weeks' time. If he had been, much of Europe might well be speaking German today.
But perhaps Mr. Kennedy's most irresponsible and demonstrably false pre-election remark was his drawing of a moral equivalence between our troops and the terrorists. "Our military and the insurgents are fighting for the same thing: the hearts and minds of the people," he said, "and that is a battle we are not winning."
Apart from the fact that the suicide bombers – seven of whom on election day were Saudis, while only one was an Iraqi – are more interested in losing spleens and intestines than in winning hearts and minds, the Iraqi voters showed whose side they were on – with their index fingers.
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Peter Parisi is a slot editor with the Washington Times.
Ellie