Important forward by Wild Bill

Note from The Ranter:

This fine piece was forward to us by Wild Bill and is darn good. Some of you may have seen this already, others not, so I am posting it for your review as well my friends.

from here: http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Stopping the Sleeping Sickness: Rumsfeld Before The American Legion

Posted by Hugh Hewitt | 9:30 AM

The Secretary of Defense delivered a speech yesterday that was as blunt as any given by any senior official since the beginning of the war. Reading it against the near total refusal of the MSM to report seriously on the attacks in San Francisco yesterday makes its message even more compelling. (The killer didn't make the front page of the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, or the Boston Globe. Just another terrible case of road rage that happened to start out 20 miles from San Francisco and end up taking out two pedestrians in front of the Jewish Center and 12 more in an area traditionally considered a Jewish neighborhood.)

Rumsfeld and others are attempting to prevent the country from slipping into a sort of historical coma, one which will allow the country to avoid confronting the world in which we live, and one in which certain very unpleasant events --bombings, rampages, plots-- would not register. Thus a sharp drop in SAT scores and John Mark Carr get a massive amount of attention, but even the possibility of another terrorist attack gets waved away and the incredible text of the letter from Ahmadinejad to Chancellor Merkel is not reported on except in blogs.

The exaltation of the trivial and resolute refusal to focus on the menace to the West and its sudden manifestations in the homeland --Seattle, UNC, the El Al counter on 7/4/02. and yesterday's rampage-- is so amazing that were it not so absolutely dangerous it might be fascinating. But it is very dangerous indeed because the enemy seems to understand that nothing he says or does registers much less provokes reaaction. After all, we have issued a visa to Ayatollah Khatemi even though his country is a rogue regime systematically calling for genocide and arming terrorists around the globe. While a case could be made that he must be allowed to travel to and from the UN, how is it that he is being allowed to come to Washington, and who invited him to speak at the Washington National Cathedral four days prior to the fifth anniversary of the attacks? It was from the National Cathedral that the national day of prayer and grievance proceeded five years ago, and the State Department does not understand how it might be unacceptable to allow the former leader of the world's greatest sponsor of terror --and current Chairman of the Central Council of the Militant Clerics League-- to tread there at any time, much less in September? This decision makes me angry. How does it affect the families of the victims of terror, or the survivors of lost and wounded in the war?

Iran is supplying the killers of our troops in Iraq, and someone invited its former leader to the National Cathedral? Someone in the State Department said "Fine by us?" This is madness. And suicidal madness. How the jihadists must laugh and celebrate our idiocy.

We have seen this sort of collective denial before, and not just in Great Britain in the '30s, but also in our government in the '90s. (This denial is presented in ABC's "The Path to 9/11" on the nights of 9/10 and 9/11.) Rumsfeld knows what is happening, and yesterday's speech was another attempt to arrest the spread of the sleeping sickness engulfing many Americans. We have to hope that it is simply deep within the MSM and the bureaucratic elites, and not among ordinary Americans.

The text of Secretary Rumsfeld's speech is here. Key excerpts:

There was a strange innocence in views of the world. Someone recently recalled one U.S. Senator’s reaction in September 1939, upon hearing that Hitler had invaded Poland to start World War II. He exclaimed:

"Lord, if only I could have talked with Hitler, all this might have been avoided.”

Think of that!

I recount this history because once again we face the same kind of challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism. Today, another enemy -- a different kind of enemy -- has also made clear its intentions -- in places like New York, Washington, D.C., Bali, London, Madrid, and Moscow. But it is apparent that many have still not learned history’s lessons.

We need to face the following questions:

• With the growing lethality and availability of weapons, can we truly afford to believe that somehow vicious extremists can be appeased?
• Can we really continue to think that free countries can negotiate a separate peace with terrorists?
• Can we truly afford the luxury of pretending that the threats today are simply “law enforcement” problems, rather than fundamentally different threats, requiring fundamentally different approaches?
• And can we truly afford to return to the destructive view that America -- not the enemy -- is the real source of the world’s trouble?

These are central questions of our time. And we must face them.

We hear everyday of new plans, new efforts, to murder Americans and other free people. Indeed, the plot recently discovered that would have killed hundreds -- possibly thousands -- of innocent men, women, and children on planes coming from Britain to the United States should have reminded us that this enemy is serious, lethal, and relentless.

But this is still -- even in 2006 -- not well recognized or fully understood. It seems that in some quarters there is more of a focus on dividing our country, than acting with unity against the gathering threats.

We find ourselves in a strange time:

• When a database search of America’s leading newspapers turns up 10 times as many mentions of one of the soldiers at Abu Ghraib who were punished for misconduct, than mentions of Sergeant First Class Paul Ray Smith, the first recipient of the Medal of Honor in the Global War on Terror;
• When a senior editor at Newsweek disparagingly refers to the brave volunteers in our Armed Forces as a “mercenary army”;
• When the former head of CNN accuses the American military of deliberately targeting journalists and the former CNN Baghdad bureau chief admits he concealed reports of Saddam Hussein’s crimes when he was in power so CNN could stay in Iraq; and
• It is a time when Amnesty International disgracefully refers to the military facility at Guantanamo Bay, which holds terrorists who have vowed to kill Americans and which is arguably the best run and most scrutinized detention facility in the history of warfare, as “the gulag of our times.”

Those who know the truth need to speak out against these kinds of myths, and distortions being told about our troops and about our country.

The struggle we are in is too important -- the consequences too severe -- to have the luxury of returning to the old mentality of “Blame America First.”

Rumsfeld went on:

Not so long ago, an exhibit on the Enola Gay at the Smithsonian during the 1990s seemed to try to rewrite the history of World War II by portraying the United States as an aggressor. Fortunately, the American Legion was there to lead the effort to set the record straight.

This watchdog role is even more important today in a war that is to a great extent fought in the media on a global stage -- to not allow the lies and the myths be repeated without question or challenge -- so that at least the second and third draft of history will be more accurate than the quick first allegations.

You know from experience that in every war there have been mistakes and setbacks and casualties. War is, as Clemenceau said, a “series of catastrophes that results in victory.”

And in every army, there are occasionally bad actors -- the ones who dominate the headlines today -- who don’t live up to the standards of their oath and of our country.

But you also know that they are a very small percentage of the hundreds of thousands of honorable men and women in all theaters in this struggle who are serving with humanity, decency and courage in the face of continuous provocation.

And that is important in this “long war,” where any moral or intellectual confusion about who and what is right or wrong can weaken the ability of free societies to persevere.

Our enemies know this well. They frequently invoke the names of Beirut and Somalia -- places they see as examples of American retreat and weakness. And as we have seen -- even this month -- in Lebanon, they design attacks and manipulate the media to try to demoralize public opinion. They doctor photographs of casualties, use civilians as human shields and then provoke an outcry when civilians are accidentally killed in their midst, which of course was their intent.

The good news is that most Americans, though understandably influenced by what they read and see in the media, have good inner gyroscopes and good centers of gravity.

So I am confident that, over time, they will evaluate and reflect on what is happening in this struggle and come to wise conclusions.

Iraq, a country that was brutalized by a cruel and dangerous dictatorship is now traveling the slow, difficult, and uncertain path to secure a new future, under a representative government -- one that is at peace with its neighbors, rather than a threat to their own people, their neighbors, or to the world.

As the nature of the threat and the conflict in Iraq has changed over these past several years, so have the tactics and deployments. But while military tactics have changed and adapted to the realities on the ground, the strategy has not -- which is to empower the Iraqi people to defend, govern, and rebuild their own country.

The extremists themselves call Iraq the “epicenter” in the War on Terror. And our troops know how important their mission is.

A Soldier who recently volunteered for a second tour in Iraq, captured the feelings of many of his peers. In an e-mail to friends he wrote:

“I ask that you never take advantage of the liberties guaranteed by the shedding of free blood, never take for granted the freedoms granted by our Constitution. For those liberties would be merely ink on paper were it not for the sacrifice of generations of Americans who heard the call of duty and responded heart, mind and soul with ‘Yes, I will.’”

Someday that young man may be a member of the American Legion, attending a convention such as this. I hope he will be. And one day, a future speaker may reflect back on this time of historic choice -- remembering the questions raised as to our country’s courage, dedication, and willingness to persevere this fight until we prevail.

The question is not whether we can win. It is whether we have the will to persevere.

I am convinced that Americans do have that determination. And that we have learned the lessons of history, of the folly of turning a blind eye to danger. These are lessons you know well -- lessons that your heroism has helped to teach to generations of Americans.

This is an amazing and very necessary speech given by a man who has seen a great deal from very many vantage points going back many decades. He understands the war in which we find ourselves, and is urgently attempting to alert others to it. Those who don't want to be bothered want him fired or retired. That he is still there is one of the reasons why this Administration continues to receive the support of serious people focused on the real threats.

Perhaps he can now call Secretary Rice and inquire why, when so much has been required of the military and so much sacrifice made, we are allowing a terror master to roam D.C.?

UPDATE: NationalReviewOnline has a fine symposium on the appalling decision to allow Khatemi free-passage around the U.S.