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These days, it seems that a large part of Hollywood has been stirred to fly to MSNBC's McEnroe show and mock our President and Commander in Chief as our troops fight to make our world a safer place. Liberals of all stripes are chirping in. Senator Robert C. Byrd attacks with his book "Losing America". Comparing himself in the book to Napoleon in his Elba (p. 34), Byrd campaigned on Chris Matthews show at CNBC, and pontificated on NBC's "Meet the Press". Byrd's politicized view is wrong in many, many places, such as when he calls reference to the real threat of even greater terrorism "spin" (p. 199), and alleges that our side "split the UN", when it was really several of our erstwhile allies seeking to feather their own nests with Iraq who split the UN. . . . One difficult thing to understand is why Chris Matthews praised Byrd's book and seized upon that occasion as the time to proclaim liberal concerns. If Chris had all the liberal mis-apprehensions about our Chief Executive he announced in the presence of arch-liberal Byrd, why did he not mention them in all the shows leading up to tackling Sadaam Hussein? Are his liberal prejudices just vague feelings not informed by worthwhile thoughts --- presumably he would have shared any worthwhile thoughts with his viewers at the time?
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I don't remember Matthews mentioning his apprehensions to his viewers when the Iraq action was being discussed and decided. So did he deny his viewers his best ideas at the time to save his professions of strong liberal leanings for now? . . . . And how can Matthews praise Byrd's book? I thought Chris would have more understanding of Eisenhower and what his generation did for us. When Bush says basically the same thing as Eisenhower said (compare pp. 142 and 146), Byrd mis-interprets it. I thought Matthews would have more balance and perspective than that. He ought to be taking Byrd to task over his many, many mis-interpretations. Maybe having to talk all the time as a TV host just does not leave adequate time for reflection. The reality is that just about everything in the book is wrong on understanding, wrong on perspective: it says lots of the right words, but if you understand the correct application of the words, you see that the book has it backwards, and completely wrong. . . . It is not hard to understand how someone who got Vietnam wrong (as Byrd confesses he did) could also get Iraq wrong. It is just a little hard to understand how any one career could be bracketed by getting wrong 2 of the chief foreign policy questions and most important public issues of 40 years. One has to live a long time to accomplish that. . . . Byrd uses a lot of the right words. He just completely mis-understands and mis-applies them. . . . He is actually very distant from his own party. It was with "utter astonishment" that Byrd learned from Senator Daschle (p. 160) that Democrats worked with the White House on the resolution of Presidential authority to act. It sounds as if, given the bad judgment, or even cowardice he thinks characterize his own party (he says, with everything else, they are "sleepwalking through history" p. 249), either they are a bunch of buffoons easily led around by the nose, and ought to resign; or he has missed the boat. Either way, it does not look good for Napoleon in Elba. I think it is Byrd who lacks the right perspective.
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To show how he uses words and phrases without understanding, Byrd writes that we should not adopt Band-Aid solutions (p.241). But then he proceeds to urge a Band-Aid solution. What, after all, is a Band-Aid solution? It is to focus our efforts on giving attention to the immediate hurt, and try to eliminate the immediate hurter. But that is what Byrd recommends when he says we should be spending our time going after Bin Laden. Byrd would have put the focus on chasing Bin Laden (pages 234, 239, 241). ("We have failed to get Bin Laden", he laments on page 246.) Though Byrd acknowledges that Bin Laden has successfully hidden from us for a long time, he urges us to spend our time hunting him. Byrd would have us play into Bin Laden's hands (the terrorists all count on the fact that it is hard for even a large force to find a small one), when we should be turning Bin Laden's game against him. . . . What is Bid Laden's game? Bid Laden loves to "hit and hide", to instill fear, and discouragement in a large population by attacking a small population. That is exactly what we need to do to Bin Laden's terrorist population to reverse the effect. We need to see that every time they attack small, they suffer large. If we spend our time hunting a well-hidden Bin Laden as he counts on us to do , we give Bin Laden the victory he wants. . . What we need to do is defeat Bin Laden at his own game. How do we do that? We instill fear and discouragement and defeat in the terrorist population of which Bin Laden is a member every time they show their heads. We crush them. We make it impossible for them to achieve any success. Anytime they attack, we attack back and cause them 2-100 times the losses they caused us. We show them that terrorism does not pay off for anybody, and will not pay off, certainly for them. . . . We give Bin Laden exactly what he seeks to impose on us: what he wants least of all - - - fear and discouragement among the terrorist population which he wants to rally, whose worship and adoration he so desires. . . . We make him an anathema (a cursed thing) with whom to associate is disaster. Only when the terrorist community at large sees defeat in every venture will they shrink away.
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And make no mistake: Bin Laden intends every attack on us to rally more volunteers to attack America. Why do you think we had the Anthrax attack on Washington just when the jets hit the Twin Towers in New York? Because some terrorist cell was rallied enough by the apparent success of Bin Laden's crew at the Twin Towers to be willing to risk expanding the attack on us, hoping that we would be too busy dealing with the Twin Towers hurt, chasing Bin Laden (a Band Aid solution) to deal with other terrorist risks. Bin Laden was hoping that 1,000 other terrorist cells would rally to attack us. And Sadaam Hussein was hoping the terrorist attacks would keep us pre-occupied nursing our wounds, that we would fail to deal with his violations, and fail to enforce the commitments he made to the U.N. and to us, which he had been violating for 10 years by shooting rockets at our patrol aircraft. Sadaam was a terrorist with all the resources of a country at his disposal, and needed to be brought down. Hussein just waiting for us to get so pre-occupied with nursing our wounds that he could dare some new provocation (he would have liked to rip our pilots limb from limb in Baghdad's streets if he could have shot them down). The UN was just a League of Nations all over again, and Sadaam needed the rule of law brought down on him (but the UN failed when the sell-outs sought sweet-heart oil alliances with him).
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Byrd's Band-Aid approach of chasing a well-hidden Bin Laden is exactly the wrong strategy. . . . That is why Bush's strategy and determination to defeat the terrorists is also the correct application of Eisenhower's words at the front of Byrd's book. Byrd talks about Eisenhowers admonition that "our forces must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction" (p. 142), but what other aggressor besides Saadam Hussein have you seen suffer "his own destruction" in the last 40 years? It is precisely because our forces have not been seen "ready for instant action", but used in just the opposite way for so long, scarcely seen in action, held back by months of committee meetings, and seldom-applied, even used in a "sensitive" way (Kerry's recent suggestion contrary to Eisenhower brings to mind Clinton's sending a few helicopters into Somalia), that so many dictators and terrorists of the world have become emboldened to attack and rally their fellow-travelers to join in attacking us. We have been too nice for too long, and we have suffered on acccount of it. . . . Terrorists are a network, a volunteer army always looking for the support of some tyrant like Sadaam and looking for someone else to make a first attack so they can join in. We have already had that fellow-traveler of the terrorists attack Washington with Anthrax after the attacks on the Towers. If you begin to see terrorists emboldened by more attacks, you can expect more such parallel, self-coordinated, volunteer attacks. And if that resumes, and gains any foothold, then no place on earth will be safe. The only way to defeat them is comprehensively.
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That is why Bush's policy of dealing with terrorism the way Eisenhower would have, with our forces "mighty" and known to be "ready for instant action", not timid, shy, sensitive, or reluctant, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction", is the right approach. That is why we must deal with terrorism by demanding that every nation cooperate against it, or be regarded as supporting it. A comprehensive policy is the right policy, the only policy to deal with terrorism at large (rather than the Band-Aid approach of the Kerry-Byrds). . . . And Byrd even shies away from --- protests --- calling the attacks by renengade Islamics what they are --- evil. He does not think the Muslims are up to the challenge of recognizing evil (p. 91). I would venture that most of them are more afraid of the so-called "Islamic" terrorists than we are, as they know that evil from closer up. They have never even had the freedom to investigate and decide for themselves what they might think the most truthful religion is. Byrd's failure to call evil evil just because an Islamic association is claimed for it is just like failing to call the Ku Klux Klan evil just because some sort of mis-conceived Christian association is claimed for it. I won't hesitate to call any hooded murderers evil, no matter what religion they claim to represent, and we should expect any well-intended Muslim to recognize the terrorists' evil for the evil it is. The Bible says, "Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil." To shy away from calling such murderous evil as these Ishmaelite Ax-Murderers perpetrate (or as Ku Klux Klanners perpetrate) is evil itself. If we cannot expect Muslims to recognize it as evil when the terrorists murder, then would Byrd also want us to refuse to call it evil when Ku Klux Klanners murder? Maybe he would. But I will not go along with that.
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All through Byrd's book, he makes the same mistakes of perspective, of balance, of proper appreciation for the facts and the realities of our times. The whole terrorist enterprise is one strategy (broken down into lots of tactics): to instill fear, defeat and discouragement into a large group by attacking a small group. And to beat them at their game, we have to do that to them: to so defeat every single group of terrorists wherever they show their heads that their whole population at large is discouraged from venturing to attack anyone. . . . In more lack of balance and failure to understand we hear the Kerry-Byrds claiming today that Bush has not done well with the economy, when it was those very liberal democrats who fought his every effort to stimulate the economy every step of the way, so he succeeded in bringing it back as much as he has over their every effort to resist. They do not have the balance or perspective to see that if we had had their prescription for the economy in place, we would be in deep depression right now. The whole world's economy was affected with a strong sense of foreboding by what those terrorists were doing, and that had to be countered by some of the strongest stimulus, along with the strongest use of military forces, in a long time. If we had been left with the liberal nay-bobs nattering after the fashion of the U.N. they claim to wish could have acted (but it was a failure like the League of Nations), I shudder to think where we would be this moment.
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All the liberals are out in a rage. Reminds me of the Psalm, "Why do the heathen rage in confusion, and imagine an empty scheme? . . . The kings of the earth take counsel together against the Lord and His Anointed. Let us break their bands of restraint from us" (Psalm 2:1-3). Hollywood just wants to break every band of moral restraint which can be imposed by an active FCC. Hollywood wants to be able to go back to partying with abandon as they did when Bill Clinton spent $200,000 of Air Force One's time, using taxpayers money to get his hair styled on the Hollywood tarmac. Where was Robert C. Byrd's outrage when liberal Bill was at large? And who does Byrd honor by claiming they were "not asleep"? The ACLU. That ought to tell you enough about where Byrd is coming from to fill a book. Byrd's analysis is faulty, his priorities are faulty, and his loyalties are faulty. If you turn this country over to the false prophets of Hollywood, the ACLU, and the Demo-Byrdians, you are in for a lot of trouble. . . . Do you know why President Bush is having to do so much hard work, now, after this country got into so many difficulties after 8 years of Democrat administration? Because Bill Clinton ignored so much of the hard work for his 8 years as he conducted a big party at the White House with all his Hollywood buddies. Do you want to get 8 more years behind on all the real jobs of dealing with the real world, and outrage our Arab neighbors even more, as Bill Clinton did for all those years of celebrating Hollywood? If you do, you are asking for a peck of trouble. Think about it.
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