Friday, August 27, 2004
There is one factor that stands Senator Kerry's foes in stark contrast to the object of their ire - the SwiftVets have been out answering questions and facing their detractors in force and in person, while the man who wishes to be the leader of the Free World hides his head and sends his foot soldiers out where he fears to tread.
John O'Neill, leader of the SwiftVets, has been all over the talk shows, taking all the enemy can throw at him. He's been screamed at and shouted down, trashed by the Kerry surrogates in the Op-Eds - and through it all he and the others have kept their cool. They've answered the critics rationally and either face-to-face or with their own words.
In response, in spite of all the trashing, their credibility has grown. They're what you call, "stand up." The American People respect that. They naturally respond well to people who are cool under fire, stick to their guns and outlast their enemies with poise.
Contrast now with the man who would be President. He has to date avoided all the tough questions. The closest he's come to facing the press since this story broke hard was a puff-appearance on The Daily Show. Facing the American People in a Townhall-style appearance, his only response is to prevaricate further, insisting that all the men on his boat back-up what he's said. The trouble for Kerry is, they don't.
Even worse, while he's been ducking, his surrogates have been out on the warpath. His most vociferous allies in the press - from the talkies to papers - have refused to face the facts in substance, and again, it appears that the people see through this farce. Meanwhile, the questions continue to grow.
It makes it seem as though Kerry just doesn't have the ammunition to face his enemies. He doesn't have the bullets, as John O'Neill does...why? Could it be that the truth simply isn't on Kerry's side? And leaving aside the allegations of prevarication and opportunism inherent in the tales of a young John Kerry's time in Vietnam, how can he possibly back away from the truth - a truth recorded on a thousand rolls of tape and seared into a thousand living memories - of what John Kerry did and said when he returned. What he said and how that made people feel - many of them Vets with far more distinguished records than Kerry - is something that John Kerry simply cannot escape. He would have to apologize. He would have to disown that part of his life, and that's something he refuses to do. Even if he wanted to, could he really? Far too much of his core constituency supports Kerry because of what he represents in standing for universal American Guilt.
He can't cut that part of his life loose for personal ego reasons, and he can't cut it loose for constituency reasons.
Worst of all, rather than having the guts to answer the critics in person, and on the record - in other words, be a stand-up guy, himself - he does what every American should be repulsed by - he attempts to silence them through threats. No one should support the right to lie and slander. If the SwiftVets are spinning their own yarns out of whole cloth in order to do destroy the man's reputation, then by all means, prove it in court and make them pay.
But that's not what the Kerry campaign has done. They've blustered and threatened. They've tossed mud at the wall - created the impression that stations that carry the SwiftVets stuff risk legal action in the hope that they won't broadcast. They've threatened the publisher with the same. All while Kerry himself hides in the bunker. That's not what America is about.
Americans are manifestly fair. They'll listen. They'll give great leeway over events that occurred three decades past.
If they're given a chance.
But when they're not given that chance, when they see someone, someone who conducts themselves well, who speaks with their own voice, who puts their own face before the camera and says, "This is what I believe," when they see that person shouted down, smeared, threatened and attacked...it does not sit well. They want to know what it is that someone doesn't want them to hear, and in response, they begin to listen even more closely.
There is a further lesson here. That is: Is this what the American People can expect from a Kerry Presidency? Can a candidate already beset by a reputation for standing on every side of every issue cannot even stand up and tell us about himself? If he cannot stand up for and defend himself, how will he defend us?
Will he send out his attorneys to protect America? Will he use legal threats and hollow bluster to face down our enemies? Our enemies, like John Kerry's are real. They cannot be ignored or wished away. The type of battles America will face as the years roll into the 21st century will require stand-up leadership - leadership that knows what America, and perhaps just as important, they, stand for. And they need to be able to communicate that impression to us. We need such leaders now more than ever. We need men and women who can face the realities of the world, not hunker in the bunker, pretending they don't exist and dispatching their political sharps and lawyers to scare our foes into submission.
This fight is between Kerry and those who feel betrayed by him. It is a dilemma entirely of his own creation. It has nothing to do with President Bush - a President who has answered all of the questions about his past, even releasing all of his military records. Contrast with Kerry who has done neither. His response to this crisis is instructive - he has hidden and dispatched others to fight in his stead.
Ironically, like the leadership he opposed all those years ago, he has allowed his supporters to sally forth and fight a battle on his behalf that may not be based on the whole truth. He, the leader, stays out of harm's way while the people who are fighting his battles may just be digging themselves down deep enough to bury the pieces of their honor they've lost when the truth comes out. How people's positions change over a lifetime!
Perhaps sadder still that there are so many only too willing to prostitute themselves - screaming louder to stifle the growing evidence that something is rotten in their cause. A not unexpected occurrence given that many of these are from the same pool of folks who are blocking their ears and humming to avoid facing the reality of the War we're in - even over the din of falling towers and exposed terror plots.
John Kerry's inability to stand up and be counted, to allow seconds to try to stifle free speech and honest dissent on his behalf and the methods he uses to respond to threats are all indicative of the man's instincts and serve as a virtual x-ray of the candidate's core. What it says about the man of thirty years ago is a side issue.
What it shows we can expect of the man as President is far more relevant, and it does not look good.
I believe the American People are beginning to recognize this fact.
Update: Jeremy says the Senator's diplomatic skills leave something to be desired.
Update2: Interesting development at Captain's Quarters: "Former Secretary of the Navy and 9/11 Commission member John Lehman denies ever signing the modified citation Kerry's site has prominently displayed for months, and states categorically that he didn't write the additional language describing the engagement:"
Brilliant! Everyone should read this.
James Taranto, are you listening!? ;)
Thanks. :)
Ghetto isn't it! He reminds me of a defective Al Gore! It is not his ideals that scare me the most (although those are scary enough) but rather his charactor under fire. If he can not lead our nation under "attack" by war "buddies," how can he lead our nation against Al Queda, North Korea, Iran and the United Nations (only to name a few)? Selah!
Well said, Sol! Remember all the dogs that went barking when PC said he did not have sex with that woman? I think we'll see more than a few turn tail, soon.
Great post.
I think we're finally seeing the effects of all this in the polls.
Well written, and dead on target!
Of course, when the left is accused of saying something outrageous, they say that any criticism has a "chilling effect" on free speech; and they accuse their critics of wanting to overturn the First Amendment.
Excellent! Finally someone puts in as it should be said. Isn't there a newspaper in this country which has the backbone to print this? Are blogs the only source of TRUTH in our time?
Unfortunately, the people who should be reading this are at NASCAR races and baseball games or slurping Buds in front of their TVs. They are the ones who will line up to vote for Kerry, and there are millions of them.
KERRY BEAT THE SYSTEM (with the help of the system, NYT ect)
It is a great mistake and a fraudulent one at that to buy into/accept/reason that somehow because Kerry went to Viet Nam, (in spite of whatever happened during his four month "visit")---that---that in itself somehow makes him honorable, noble, ----ad nauseum---an effort calculated by himself and his supporting media to give him some kind of recognition of his "service" thus transposing him into "war hero status". Never mind that he lied about it before/during/after!---and the "hero" is purely fictional, a perverted calculation, suspiciously based on and influenced by the equally dubious film, Apocalypse Now. Much to Hollywood's delight, the Kerry/Sheen character is the central casting hero being foisted upon the masses with no basis in fact, just slick Hollywood pretense all under the welcoming guise of the media, ---both entities--- driven by a hatred of and desire to depose, President Bush.
In an effort to want to put VN behind us, there is too great of rush to sweep under the rug the facts and to gloss over Kerry's motives, simply give him the benefit of the doubt and agree that his "service" was noble, something to be proud of.
If Kerry had genuinely volunteered to go to VN, put his life in some sort of danger via that action and then became disillusioned with the war---that would be one thing.
BUT THAT IS NOT WHAT HAPPENED
Kerry is a premeditated, scheming opportunist---has been all his life and continues the ploy with his carefully engineered, central casting of "Kerry, the war hero, Kerry the man's man" and all that type of Hollywood fluff.
We have all seen Kerry in our every day lives. Remember back to school. Kerry was/is the "brown-noser", "apple polisher", the loser always trying to take credit for someone else's achievements, the rodent who would stab anyone in the back to get notice, attention, credit. Kerry is Sgt Bilko. Kerry is the athlete who "enhances" his lacking ability with performance drugs to win. The Kerry twisted persona can justify anything to win---to him it matters not how he wins, only that he wins, he will crush anything that gets in his way, not from his own strength and courage, but using money from his sugar mamma to buy what he can't achieve on his own.
Kerry is the personification of "Catch 22". Kerry is a "user", ---wives, people, fantasies, ever upward climbing. How to get ahead in business without even trying, or, more personalized in Kerry's case, how to steal an election through fraud and deceit. And watch, if and when he loses, he will not go down as easy as Algore. Kerry will fight to contest the outcome, even if it is a 50 State sweep for the President,--- already Kerry has the mechanism in place to undo the election results, teams of lawyers throughout the U.S. ready to pounce, U.N. observers to make sure a "fair" election takes place(translation, one that delivers the Presidency to Kerry).
What Kerry actually did in Viet Nam was realize he could improve his credentials for eventually gaining the White House as his hero JFK before him did, by creating "another" PT109 episode. Kerry tried to avoid actual service, asking for deferments etc, but when it become inevitable that he should go, he then looked around for the "safest" way to create "Kerry the war hero". Initially, by volunteering for Naval duty, his thinking was he could stay out of harm's way by remaining off shore in a big naval vessel, which he did for a while. But being another face in the crowd on a large Navy vessel cramped his style, made it almost impossible to dream up ways to put in for phony medals, kept him under too much scrutiny to where he couldn't creat his destined "hero" image. Then, it occurred to him that piloting a swift boat could be used to create even more of an appearance of "combat" while not exposing himself to any real danger, at the time he applied, the swift boats were not involved or even close to any of the real fighting and he was driven by his delusion of grandeur as the rightful heir to JFK, PT 109, and ascendancy to the Presidency---and besides, he would have lots of time and opportunities to make his "home movies".
Now this is the real motive why Kerry was there in the first place. And the fact that he took along his "brownie" and had himself filmed in staged combat settings should be painfully awakening to any casual observer--- other than those who wish not to see,---ie the mainstream media who wishes Bush out, Kerry in AT ANY PRICE! (There are none so blind as those who will not see). Think about it if you find this somewhat extreme---what other military service personnel brought along (which shows premeditation) filming capability and then went to the trouble to "stage" combat sequences???---For what reason???? And this cold, calculated effort has significant basis to be workable as these purveyors of history "re-write" are counting on the average arm chair American to accept this fiction as fact because---"there it is on T.V., in film, if it is on T.V. and the talking heads say it is real, then by gosh, it must be real, it must be what really happened".
So, in essence, we have a phony cartoon character, much like Bubba, who goes to VN simply to create credentials for himself, not out of patriotic belief in his country or the war itself,--- instead we have the pitiful, disgusting charade that is now being spun by the mouthpiece of the "donks" and Kerry himself, ranting: "never mind the fine details of what actually happened, at least he volunteered, at least he was there"---what does it really matter if he was in or near Cambodia, at least he was in VN.
It matters because a lie is a lie.
Kerry's "service" in VN and to our country was no different than if Michael Moore went today to Iraq to film a twisted phony version of U.S. aggression in Iraq and in doing so, returned as a "veteran" who had put his life at risk in "service" to his country. There is no difference between these two, the ketchup/pickle king and the fat slob Moore. They both would--- and have--- sold their country out in a flat minute for any self-seeking, self-promoting, self-aggrandizement goal they felt they could gain by their fraudulent "service" to gain their perverted ends--- no matter what the cost, what the lie, who has to be hurt. In their twisted philosophy, the end result justifies the means used to achieve it.
To not really examine the true motive of Kerry's "service" and to give him a pass on all this by saying that at least he volunteered, he was there, he did sustain "some kind of injury", (even if it was self inflicted) is to sugar coat the fraud and play into his game plan of reaching the White House, where, in his twisted, fantasy mind, he believes he rightfully belongs and he is counting on "coach potato America" to apathetically accept his fraud due to the credential of Hollywood and the Media. If Streisand, perky Katie, Dan and all the rest of them say it is so, then it must be so!
Kerry's war "hero" status cannot stand up to any serious scrutiny, witness the cracks since the book, Unfit for Command, Kerry's refusal to release pertinent military records (until he gets them laundered) and the recent statement by Secretary of the Navy, Lehman, that the document supposedly carrying his signature for Kerry's Silver Star is FALSE. Kerry has wrapped himself as worthy due to his 4 months in Viet Nam, he cannot stand on his 20 undistinguished, practically useless years in the Senate. The man has no accomplishment in life other than living off of other men's money inherited by their widows who Kerry has sucked up to.
There is so much in the Kerry convoluted smoking gun that a fair and unbiased press would be all over his dillusions/falsehoods with a microscope, but no, the mainstream media refuses and has accepted the fictional Kerry farce because they want Bush defeated more than they want the truth. Rather than investigate Kerry, the mainstream media, ie the New York Times chooses to attack those who expose Kerry for the fraud that he is. Kerry is their candidate and they will ignore, look the other way, even fabricate for Kerry, whatever it takes to get "their" man in.
We, the American people cannot let this happen. No one elected perky Katie, Dan, Peter, Tom, George Soros, the NYT---the list goes on, but these people have more power than anyone else simply because of their celebrity status and Soros's money. If the next Presidential election is stolen/bought by the likes of these self appointed cronies of the fourth estate, America will lose her greatness, the word must go out to expose what is happening and people, regular people must take back our country before it is too late and get everyone possible involved in exposing this sham, the phony Kerry, the disgrace that has become the media, the threat to our country to be defeated from within.