Zell Miller is the “Democratic” Senator from Georgia who has made no bones about the fact that he supports President Bush mainly for the so-called “war on terror”. On Wednesday evening, Miller gave a bitter angry speech against the Democrats and why he is supporting Bush. I decided to post some selected bits of the speech and give my responses to them. My responses are indicated in bold with the Me: indicator. Miller’s quotes are in italics:
President Roosevelt, in his speech that summer, told America “all private plans, all private lives, have been in a sense repealed by an overriding public danger.”
In 1940 Wendell Wilkie was the Republican nominee.
And there is no better example of someone repealing their “private plans” than this good man.
He gave Roosevelt the critical support he needed for a peacetime draft, an unpopular idea at the time.
And he made it clear that he would rather lose the election than make national security a partisan campaign issue.
Me: And Wilkie was a loser – several times because his party was still known as the ones who did nothing when the Depression hit. It would be another 10 years before the GOP won the Whitehouse.
Besides it is the present GOP that is making National Security an issue in the campaign. It is the only “issue” they can run on and is a smoke screen.
I can remember when Democrats believed that it was the duty of America to fight for freedom over tyranny.
It was Democratic President Harry Truman who pushed the Red Army out of Iran, who came to the aid of Greece when Communists threatened to overthrow it, who stared down the Soviet blockade of West Berlin by flying in supplies and saving the city.
Me: The Democrats defended freedom in Vietnam…. oh wait…. never mind.
And it was Truman who integrated the military and started the trend of Democrat support for civil rights ending decades of tyranny in this country.
Motivated more by partisan politics than by national security, today’s Democratic leaders see America as an occupier, not a liberator.
And nothing makes this Marine madder than someone calling American troops occupiers rather than liberators.
Me: Better have a talk with W. who, in a press conference, said we were occupying Iraq.
Tell that to the one-half of Europe that was freed because Franklin Roosevelt led an army of liberators, not occupiers.
Me: But FDR and later Truman didn’t force Europe to adopt US version of democracy. The people in Europe wanted to be freed from Nazis but the US presence since 1945 has not been a big party. All we did there was remove another occupying army.
Tell that to the lower half of the Korean Peninsula that is free because Dwight Eisenhower commanded an army of liberators, not occupiers.
Me: Eisenhower? He knew it was a stalemate unless he used nukes, ran in his first election promising to bring the boys home, and did the right thing and signed a truce. Oh, that’s right Zell, South Korea is free because of a truce and 130,000 US troops and a lot of Koreans don’t want us there anymore because they feel we are the obstacle to reunification.
Tell that to the half a billion men, women and children who are free today from the Baltics to the Crimea, from Poland to Siberia, because Ronald Reagan rebuilt a military of liberators, not occupiers.
Me: No Zell it was economics, not the military that brought down the Iron Curtain. The USSR went broke.
Never in the history of the world has any soldier sacrificed more for the freedom and liberty of total strangers than the American soldier. And, our soldiers don’t just give freedom abroad, they preserve it for us here at home.
Me: Sort of. Although the military is prohibited from being used as a police force here, we go and pick fights in other countries from time to time so our enemies don’t come here and try it. Actually the fact we are bordered by the Atlantic and Pacific has more to do with our relative security than having a large army.
For it has been said so truthfully that it is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press.
Me: Actually it is the Bill of Rights and the courts that protect the press.
It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the agitator, who has given us the freedom to protest.
Me: Again it is the Bill of Rights and the courts.
It is the soldier who salutes the flag, serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag who gives that protester the freedom to abuse and burn that flag.
Me: No, the Bill of Rights
No one should dare to even think about being the Commander in Chief of this country if he doesn’t believe with all his heart that our soldiers are liberators abroad and defenders of freedom at home.
Me: It doesn’t stop them from making stuff up to justify using the military. Reagan – Grenada, Bush Sr. – Panama, Johnson – Vietnam, Bush Jr. – Iraq…..
They don’t believe there is any real danger in the world except that which America brings upon itself through our clumsy and misguided foreign policy.
Me: That is just a lie Zell but it sure sounds good doesn’t it. We have had some clumsy misguided foreign policy of late but no Democrat would be caught dead saying there was no real danger in the world.
It is not their patriotism – it is their judgment that has been so sorely lacking. They claimed Carter’s pacifism would lead to peace. They were wrong.
Me: With no qualifiers, sort of. But Carter did bring Egypt and Israel together and until Sharon and his thugs messed things up, there was actually some hope that #1 problem in the Middle East might be solved.
They claimed Reagan’s defense buildup would lead to war. They were wrong.
Me: Excuse me Zell, but do you read the papers. Maybe you mean a nuclear war? Even that is not certain with Pakistan and India having their fingers on the button. I guess we are just on vacation in Iraq.
And, no pair has been more wrong, more loudly, more often than the two Senators from Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy and John Kerry.
Me: Ah…. the LIBERAL card. At first I thought his brain had stopped working and he forgot who was running on the Dem ticket.
Listing all the weapon systems that Senator Kerry tried his best to shut down sounds like an auctioneer selling off our national security but Americans need to know the facts.
Me: Since 1996, the John Kerry who once opposed the Apache helicopter and wanted to cut Tomahawk cruise-missile funds by 50% has evolved into a steady supporter of military budgets. Starting in 1997 Kerry voted for every regular Department of Defense appropriations bill and for every authorization bill as well. Before that time he did oppose entire defense spending bills but not specific weapons systems in order to help reduce the federal deficit and in one proposal use the savings to hire more police officers.
This is the man who wants to be the Commander in Chief of our U.S. Armed Forces?
U.S. forces armed with what? Spitballs?
Me: If that is what Congress wants to pay for then sure.
Senator Kerry has made it clear that he would use military force only if approved by the United Nations. Kerry would let Paris decide when America needs defending. I want Bush to decide.
Me: Ah… The French card – nice Zell. Too bad Kerry never said it.
John Kerry, who says he doesn’t like outsourcing, wants to outsource our national security.
Me: What? He never said that.
For more than twenty years, on every one of the great issues of freedom and security, John Kerry has been more wrong, more weak and more wobbly than any other national figure. As a war protestor, Kerry blamed our military.
Me: No, he blamed the civilian leaders of the military who sent he and others to war they knew we couldn’t win but were too full of themselves to get out until they lost all public support. That is a fact as told but the actual people who made the decision to continue the war in Vietnam.
As a Senator, he voted to weaken our military. And nothing shows that more sadly and more clearly than his vote this year to deny protective armor for our troops in harms way, far-away.
Me:
John Kerry wants to re-fight yesterday’s war. George Bush believes we have to fight today’s war and be ready for tomorrow’s challenges. George Bush is committed to providing the kind of forces it takes to root out terrorists. No matter what spider hole they may hide in or what rock they crawl under.
Me: First of all, the GOP is encouraging the attacks on Kerry’s service record. 2nd if Bush is committed to rooting out terrorists then why is Bin Laden still on the loose.
Get well soon Zell