Tell Me Again the Left Supports the Troops
By Duane Lester • Jan 9th, 2008I have been told over and over again that the left supports the military. History tells a different story. History shows the left’s contempt for the military, and the present leaders on the left continue that tradition of contempt today.
Higher Learning
Prior to the U.S. led invasion of Iraq, Columbia University hosted a six hour “teach-in” conference attended by around thirty of Columbia’s faculty. They took turns castigating President Bush and his plan to invade Iraq. The leftists also heard from Nicholas De Genova. De Genova is a professor of anthropology and Latin American studies who hates the military.
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| Nicholas De Genova |
During the six hour “protest,” De Genova said “The only true heroes are those who find ways that help defeat the US military.” He encouraged junior enlisted and junior officers to murder their superior officers. He also wished for a “million Mogadishus,” referring to the 1993 battle where 18 American soldiers were killed and more than 70 wounded.
We are to believe that this rhetoric does “not in any way represent” the university’s position, but, on the other hand, Columbia University does not allow its students to participate in Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) on campus either. Up until 1990, they could participate in ROTC at nearby Fordham University at get credit for it on their transcripts. Now, they do not. They even fought to keep recruiters off campus. And when forced to allow them, advised its students against interviewing.
At the same time, it allows Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a speaking forum. A man responsible for roadside bombs in Iraq that are killing our military men and women is not only allowed on campus without protest from the faculty, but is given a podium and a microphone. Yet a soldier in uniform is unwelcome.
While it seems that Columbia and its liberal elitist staff are no friends of the military, they are not alone. Harvard has banned recruiters. So have many other primary and secondary schools. In fact, members of our military have been harassed by liberals on several campuses.
At Seattle Community College, a group of students chased a recruiter off under protection of campus security. The mob was not reprimanded. In Santa Cruz, recruiters were chased away from a job fair. Antiwar groups brag about harassing recruiters into leaving. But they support the troops.
San Francisco
The epicenter of liberalism, leftism and lunacy. San Francisco has an especially hateful view of the military. At an anti-war rally on October 27, 2007, protesters carried signs that read:
- If we support the troops, aren’t we supporting the terrorist?
- U.S. military bases are terrorist training camps.
- Iraqis Resist the U.S. Occupancy
At a rally in 2004, marchers were seen with signs that read “Long live Fallujah,” “Long Live Iraqi Resistance” and “Support Armed Resistance in Iraq and Everywhere.”
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| Geraldo Sandoval |
But don’t think it is just the flakes. The city government has its military hating moments also. The Board of Supervisors rejected a plan to bring the historic battleship USS Iowa to San Francisco. Supervisor Geraldo Sandoval told Sean Hannity that he didn’t “want a symbol of war in the harbor.” He went on to say, “I don’t think we should have a military. Absolutely.” He later said, “The United States should not have a military. All in all, we would be in much, much, much better shape.” That one left even Alan Colmes stammering.
Another Board Supervisor, Chris Daly, worked with anti-military activists to try to ban the Blue Angels. He failed. But then they stopped the Marines from filming in the city. It was concerns over traffic, not politics at all. Right.
San Francisco voters told recruiters to stay out of the schools there and the school board voted to ban Junior ROTC from all the city’s schools. The board turned around and gave the program a reprieve, much to the chagrin of anti-military liberals:
“I’m really disappointed,” said Martha Hubert, a member of Code Pink who opposed the extension. Students “should have a choice of better things to do.”
Cheer up, Martha. There’s probably a recruiter’s office nearby you can harass. But they support the troops.
The Media
I know, the liberal media is a bit trite, but we have to cover it. Why?
Scott Beauchamp.
According to Scott Beauchamp, our military is full of heartless killers with zero empathy. He described himself mocking a disfigured IED victims, and his friends laughing. He described a private marching around with part of a human skull on his head…and people laughing. And the media lapped it up.
The main problem was, none of it was true. The “Baghdad Diarist” made it all up. And who got to the bottom of it? NBC? CBS? ABC?
None of them. It was conservative magazines The Weekly Standard and National Review. And when the truth came out, the old media left a lot to be desired in coverage of it.
The New York Times gave MoveOn.org a break for their General Betrayus ad. MoveOn.org purchased the ad at a discounted rate that they were not permitted to get according to the Times’ own policies. The Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt:
The ad appears to fly in the face of an internal advertising acceptability manual that says, ‘We do not accept opinion advertisements that are attacks of a personal nature,’
The paper’s publisher, Arthur Sulzberger, Jr, defended the discount by saying, “”If we’re going to err, its better to err on the side of more political dialogue. … Perhaps we did err in this case. If we did, we erred with the intent of giving greater voice to people.”
An interesting note about Sulzberger, Jr, comes from writer Harry Stein:
(Sulzberger’s father was nicknamed “Punch,” and the none too flattering nickname for Junior is “Pinch.”)
Pinch was a political activist in the Sixties, and was twice arrested in anti-Vietnam protests. One day, the elder Sulzberger asked his son what Pinch calls, “the dumbest question I’ve ever heard in my life.” If an American soldier runs into a North Vietnamese soldier, which would you like to see get shot? Young Arthur answered, “I would want to see the American get shot. It’s the other guy’s country.” Some Sixties activists have since thought better of their early enthusiasms. Pinch hasn’t.
I wonder how he would answer today concerning this war.
Another interesting thing with the media is how they are covering this war. It seems that as the situation improves, the coverage goes down:
Back in September, as reporters voiced skepticism of General Petraeus’ progress report, the networks aired a total of 178 Iraq stories, or just under two per network per night. (See chart.) About one-fourth of those stories (42) were filed from Iraq itself, with most of the rest originating in Washington.
In October, TV’s war news fell by about 40 percent, to 108 stories, with the number of reports filed from Iraq itself falling to just 20, or less than one-fifth of all Iraq stories. By November, the networks aired a mere 68 stories, with only eleven (16%) actually from the war zone itself.
There is no shortage of stories in Iraq that merit coverage. There is plenty of good news that can be reported. Why is there less coverage of the biggest issue in America when things are improving?
A final example of anti-military bias was given to us this Christmas by NBC. The television company initially refused to air a commercial by “Freedom’s Watch.” The commercial was too political for NBC to air. All the ad did was thank the military for their service. Take a look for yourself.
NBC had to be pressured to air an ad that just said, “Thank you.” But they support the troops.
The Current Bunch of Haters
Liberals in their own words:
John Kerry
“You know, education — if you make the most of it, you study hard and you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well.
“If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”
“And there is no reason, Bob, that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women, breaking sort of the customs of the, of the historical customs, religious customs.”
Dick Durbin
(speaking about our military’s treatment of detainees in Gitmo) “If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags or some mad regime — Pol Pot or others — that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners.”"
John Murtha
“Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood,”
Barack Obama
“We’ve got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops that we are not just air raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous problems there.”
Pete Stark
“You don’t have money to fund the war or children, but you’re going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we could get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president’s amusement.”
Rosie O’Donnell
“I just want to say something. 655,000 Iraqi civilians are dead. Who are the terrorists?“
Jim Moran
“Sure, there’s less violence, but that’s because we’ve ethnically cleansed most of Baghdad.”
Harry Reid
“…this war is lost…”
Ted Rall
“Over time, however, the endless war in Iraq began to play a role in natural selection. Only idiots signed up; only idiots died. Back home, the average I.Q. soared.”
Ted Kennedy
“Saddam’s torture chambers reopened under new management - US management.”
MoveOn.Org
“General Petraeus or General Betray Us? …Today, before Congress and the American people, General Petraeus is likely to become General Betray Us.”
Seymour Hersh
“…there has never been an [American] army as violent and murderous as our army has been in Iraq.”
The left has a hard sell to America to get them to believe that they support the troops when they behave like this. And this isn’t even the complete picture. This is a cropped snapshot. I didn’t even touch the 60s. A person could write a book about the history of liberal hatred and contempt for the military. In fact, someone did.
The whole time the left is undercutting the troops, or pushing bills that threaten the supply lines, or celebrating the number of seats they will win because of military combat deaths, they want us to believe they support the troops.
I have a hard time with that.
