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Letters to the Editor

Let's work together to ensure our newspapers get the entire story and deliver it.  If you sense a bias, then write a letter to the editor.  Keep them short and pithy and you just might get them published.

Reporting the truth is vital to a strong democracy and advancing Republican ideals.

If you have written a recent letter to the editor, send us a copy for the web site -- even if it never gets published in the paper.

Here are some recent letters:

To Kill an American

Recently someone in Pakistan had published in a newspaper an offer of a reward to anyone who killed an American, any American.  So an Australian dentist wrote an editorial the following day to let everyone know what an American is. So they would know when they found one. (Good one,  mate!!!!)
 
"An American is English, or French, or Italian, Irish, German, Spanish, Polish, Russian or Greek. An American may also be Canadian, Mexican, African, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Australian, Iranian, Asian, or Arab, or Pakistani or Afghan.
 
An American may also be a Comanche, Cherokee, Blackfoot, Navaho, Apache, Seminole or one of the many other tribes known as native Americans.
 
An American is Christian, or he could be Jewish, or Buddhist, or Muslim. In fact, there are more Muslims in America than in Afghanistan. The only difference is that in America they are free to worship as each of them chooses.
 
An American is also free to believe in no religion. For that he will answer only to God, not to the government, or to armed thugs claiming to speak for the government and for God.
 
An American lives in the most prosperous land in the history of the world. The root of that prosperity can be found in the Declaration of Independence, which recognizes the God given right of each person to the pursuit of happiness.
 
An American is generous. Americans have helped out just about every other nation in the world in their time of need, never asking a thing in return.  
 
When Afghanistan was over-run by the Soviet army 20 years ago, Americans came with arms and supplies to enable the people to win back their country!
 
As of the morning of September 11, Americans had given more than any other nation to the poor in Afghanistan. Americans welcome the best of everything...the best products, the best books, the best music, the best food, the best services. But they also welcome the least.   
 
The national symbol of America, The Statue of Liberty , welcomes your tired and your poor, the wretched refuse of your teeming shores, the homeless, tempest tossed. These in fact are the people who built America.  
 
Some of them were working in the Twin Towers the morning of September 11, 2001 earning a better life for their families. It's been told that the World Trade Center victims were from at least 30 different countries, cultures, and first languages, including those that aided and abetted the terrorists.
 
So you can try to kill an American if you must. Hitler did. So did General Tojo, and Stalin, and Mao Tse-Tung, and other blood-thirsty tyrants in the world. But, in doing so you would just be killing yourself. Because Americans are not a particular people from a particular place. They are the embodiment of the human spirit of freedom. Everyone who holds to that spirit, everywhere, is an American.
 

Unless they can't help themselves, it strikes me as political madness for Democrats to declare that the Iraq war is an "intractable quagmire" or a "grotesque mistake."

If the war turns out to be a disaster - and let's pray it doesn't - then voters will repudiate Republican foreign policy in 2006 and 2008, and Democrats will be the beneficiaries.

So why should some Democrats now be acting as though they want to see their country lose a war? Why should they say things that may undermine the morale of U.S. forces and our Iraqi allies and contribute to a U.S. defeat?

And why should they reinforce the image of their party as being so hopelessly force-averse that it can't be trusted to lead on foreign policy?

It's one thing for a Democrat like Sen. Joseph Biden (Del.) to harshly criticize the way the Bush administration is conducting the war and then recommend constructive steps for winning it.

Arguably, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) is doing something similar in calling for U.S. threats designed to keep the Iraqi government's constitution-writing process on schedule, although he's not exactly demonstrating support for allies who are risking assassination every day.

But what Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) have done with their "quagmire" and "grotesque mistake" talk is to declare that the war is, in effect, a lost cause.

The closest Kennedy comes to a positive suggestion is to call for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to resign. Then what?

Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) are demanding that President Bush come up with a new strategy, but they are offering none of their own.

Democrats of all stripes go out of their way to declare that they support U.S. troops, but Kennedy and Pelosi are implying that those men and women are fighting and dying in vain.

The logic of the Kennedy-Pelosi position should lead them to call for immediate withdrawal, but they aren't doing that either.

To be sure, they aren't alone in defeatism. Democrats are gleefully quoting Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel (Neb.), who says that "the reality is that we're losing in Iraq." Hagel, though, is virtually the only public Republican naysayer, while it's hard to find a Democrat who supports the war.

There are three explanations, not mutually exclusive, for what Democrats are doing in stepping up attacks on Bush's Iraq policy now.

One is that they are taking advantage of polls showing that the public has turned sharply negative on the war.Another is that they want to claim vindication amid rising casualty rates.And a third is that they just want to keep saying what they think - that the war is a loser.

The polls have indeed gone south on Bush. The latest Gallup poll shows that support for the war has dropped to just 39 percent, down from 72 percent in April 2003 and 47 percent this March. Fifty-nine percent oppose the war.

At last week's hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) said with some alarm that support is flagging even in South Carolina - "the most patriotic state I can imagine."

He added, "I don't think it's a blip on the radar screen. I think we have a chronic problem on our hands" that could lead to a premature U.S. withdrawal and an insurgent victory.

Rumsfeld gave Graham a good answer: This is "the time that leadership has to stand up and tell the truth. If you're facing a head wind, you've got two choices. You can turn around and go downwind or you can stand there and go into the wind, and that's what needs to be done."

Clearly, that's what the Bush administration is doing. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the Bush policy is to keep U.S. troops in Iraq "as long as they are necessary," although Democrats have been calling for an "exit strategy."

The danger is that defeatism at home will create a defeatist dynamic in Iraq. As Gen. John Abizaid, commander of U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf, told the committee that among "our troops and the troops we're training in the Iraqi and Afghan security forces, I never sensed the level of their confidence higher."

"And when I look back here at what I see is happening in Washington, within the Beltway, I've never seen the lack of confidence greater."

He added that, "when my soldiers ... ask me the question whether or not they've got the support from the American people, that worries me. And they're starting to do that.

"And when the people that we're training, Iraqis and Afghans, start asking me whether we have the staying power to stick with them, that worries me, too."

Herein lies the danger that Iraq could be Vietnam all over again.

A thick book came out this spring, "Vietnam Chronicles: the Abrams Tapes," recounting the dismay of U.S. commander Gen. Creighton Abrams as his and South Vietnamese forces won battle after battle against Communist troops from 1968 to 1972, but lost the war on the home front.

After the 1968 Tet offensive - an allied military victory, but a psychological defeat -the media and the Democratic Congress decided that the war was "unwinnable" and it gradually became so.

Abrams complained that it was impossible to get beyond "the umpires" - the media bureau chiefs in Saigon and the Congress - who wouldn't listen to reports of military progress.

"Whenever this command goes out to explain how it did something well, they're calling you out before the throw is made to the plate. That's the game we're in."

Obviously, it's up to President Bush to run the war well and to rebuild domestic support for his policies. He has some progress to show: increasing numbers of Iraqis trained, a constitutional process under way, the decision of some Sunnis to take part in politics, aggressive new action against the enemy.

Bush's policies may fail on their own because they were misconceived or badly executed. What shouldn't happen is for U.S. policy to fail because Americans lose their will. Bush's critics, the Democrats, should tell him how to win, not declare that the cause is lost.

Mort Kondracke is the Executive Editor of Roll Call.

It is important that support for Israel in the US Congress is bipartisan. Israel, the only functioning democracy in the Middle East, has no real friend in the world other than America. The stability of that friendship, demonstrated by support in the Congress (and among the American people) over many decades, has been vitally important to help Israel withstand over 50 years of attacks by terrorists or Arab nations. Israel's foes ultimately do not want compromise with it, they have the goal of destroying the nation militarily, or de-legitimizing it politically (such as at the UN and various international courts and bodies, or in academia and among the "intelligentsia").

At different times in Israel's short recent history, one or the other party has been in control of the Congress, but the support for Israel has not depended on which party was ascendant. A major reason for the support for a strong US Israel relationship in Congress, and the fact that it has remained bipartisan, has been the work of AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Regrettably, this bipartisan support appears to be slipping away. A year ago, I wrote an article titled "Why The Left Hates Israel", pointing out how the biggest threat to the Jewish state today comes from the political left. But I noted then, that at least in Congress, where support for Israel might be a bit stronger among the GOP than among Democratic members, the fever swamps of anti-Israel hate had not yet reached into the Democratic side of the aisle, with the exception of a very few members such as Cynthia McKinney, Jim Moran, and Fritz Hollings.

So what are we to make of Thursday's mock Judiciary Committee hearing designed to impeach President Bush, conducted by Michigan Congressman John Conyers? The meeting was attended by about 30 Democratic members of Congress. Among them were Jewish members, such as Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank, New York Congressman Jerry Nadler, New York Congresswoman Nita Lowey, and Illinois Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky. As reported in The Washington Post but (surprise, surprise!) not in The New York Times:

The session took an awkward turn when witness Ray McGovern, a former intelligence analyst, declared that the United States went to war in Iraq for oil, Israel and military bases craved by administration "neocons" so "the United States and Israel could dominate that part of the world." He said that Israel should not be considered an ally and that Bush was doing the bidding of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

"Israel is not allowed to be brought up in polite conversation," McGovern said. 'The last time I did this, the previous director of Central Intelligence called me anti-Semitic."

Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.), who prompted the question by wondering whether the true war motive was Iraq's threat to Israel, thanked McGovern for his "candid answer."

At Democratic headquarters, where an overflow crowd watched the hearing on television, activists handed out documents repeating two accusations -- that an Israeli company had warning of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and that there was an "insider trading scam" on 9/11 -- that previously has been used to suggest Israel was behind the attacks.

The event organizer, Democrats.com, distributed stickers saying "Bush lied/100,000 people died." One man's T-shirt proclaimed, "Whether you like Bush or not, he's still an incompetent liar," while a large poster of Uncle Sam announced: "Got kids? I want yours for cannon fodder."

So the Democrats in Congress are now giving voice and credibility to the view that Israel was responsible for the Iraq war. And other Democrats, watching the hearing at the DNC, are hosting anti-Semites who argue that Israel had advance warning of the 9/11 attacks and is therefore responsible for allowing the attacks to occur. And even deeper into familiar anti-Semitic tropes: that Israelis withheld the information so as to benefit financially.

This sounds exactly like classic anti-Semitism. These messages were not being conveyed on anti-Semitic web sites, or on Palestinian TV and radio on Thursday, but at a Democratic function from a meeting room in Congress, with more than 10% of the Democrats in Congress in attendance, and at Democratic National Headquarters. In all likelihood, these outrageous charges are now being communicated and rebroadcast throughout the Arab and Muslim world, with the imprimatur and legitimacy of the Democratic National Committee, and the US Congress as the reliable source.

Until late Friday, no Democratic Party official or Congressman, had expressed any discomfort with what happened. Now, we have a statement by Congressman Barney Frank, saying he was out of the conference room when the bad stuff happened in the mock impeachment trial, and that he thinks McGovern's view are noxious. So too, DNC Chairman Howard Dean released a statement saying the DNC rejects the hate literature that was being distributed in its own office.

In fact, the activist groups that watched the meeting at the DNC, and handed out the moonbat conspiracy literature blaming Israel for 9/11, were there as guests of the DNC. No one at the DNC can claim that they were surprised that the "hearing" in Congress or the advocacy in their office took on an anti-Semitic slant. McGovern's views are well known (that is why he was invited by Conyers, presumably), and the activists were handing out their anti-Semitic literature openly to everyone in sight in the DNC office. Except for the fact that Dana Milbank, the Washington Post reporter, (and no friend of the Bush administration for that matter), described what actually went on in his Washington Post article, this story never would have surfaced and in all likelihood, no apologies would have been offered. That is, I think, because for an increasing share of the activist members of the Democratic Party, no offense to any of this would have been taken.

In the past few weeks, the obsessive hatred of President Bush by the left has led to some extraordinarily stupid and vicious comments by Illinois Senator Richard Durbin and DNC Chairman Howard Dean, among others. Dean claimed that Republicans do not need to work (62 million trust fund loafers apparently voted for President Bush in November), and that Republicans are evil. Durbin's comments were worse: that the treatment of a few detainees in Guantanamo was so abhorrent, that it brought back memories of the Nazis in the concentration camps, or Pol Pot's murderous Cambodian killers. Trivializing the holocaust is a mainstay theme of the left, from PETA's ad campaign comparing the holocaust to Americans eating chicken for dinner to the constant attempt by university professors to argue that Israel is behaving like the Nazis. Now Dick Durbin has joined this slanderous troop.

Democrats, to judge by recent events, appear to be losing their collective minds in some form of shriek therapy. Being out of power may do that to a party used to having its way for many decades in Congress. But there is one other possible explanation for the apparent insanity. With so much money concentrated in the hands of some hard left advocates (think George Soros, Hollywood, trial lawyers, internet millionaires and some union bosses), the Democrats may feel the need to feed the beast - to protect and cater to their hardcore base, so as to keep the money flowing into the political coffers for future campaigns. So the strategy is for Democrats to be completely over the top in their attacks - trashing Bush, America, our military, Republicans, and Israel, all of whom are targets of the activists, to keep the moveon.org and Dailykos crowds happy.

Jews voted almost 3 to 1 for John Kerry over George Bush in the 2004 election. With Bush having achieved a notable record of support for Israel in his first term, the explanation for this voting pattern would seem to be that Israel mattered less to liberal Jewish voters than abortion rights, the environment, social justice, gay marriage, etc. That is fine, so long as the Democratic Party and its candidates were at least supportive of Israel, and critical of anti-Semitism.

But when the Democratic Party sponsors what amounts to a festival full of anti-Semitic hysteria and Israel bashing at its own headquarters, and invites anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists in to address members of their Congressional delegation, then I think that the line of basic support for Israel has been crossed. Arguably, when former President Jimmy Carter invited filmmaker and Israel hater Michael Moore to share his Presidential box at the 2004 Democratic convention, the line had already been crossed. Or maybe it was crossed when the entire Democratic establishment treated Jew-baiter Al Sharpton as a serious Presidential candidate and respected member of the Party in 2004. Now, there can be little doubt.

Democrats, who still have their heads screwed on straight, and retain some sense of decency, like Joe Lieberman, and Steny Hoyer, need to take a long look in the mirror at the unraveling of their Party, and begin to do something about it. Whoever was responsible for allowing the Jew hating conspiracy theorists in the DNC offices to distribute their garbage should be fired. John Conyers should be asked to explain why a known anti-Semite like McGovern was invited to the panel's discussions. Why did no member of Congress attending the Conyers hearing challenge McGovern when he went off on his loopy theories? Not only Barney Frank owes an explanation and an apology to the public for such passivity in the face of evil.

The Israel haters, and anti-Semites believe they have found a comfortable home in the Democratic Party. If American Jews continue to vote overwhelmingly for the Democrats, then they will be casting their votes for a Party which is becoming indifferent to Israel bashing and anti-Semitism, and in the case of Conyers inviting McGovern to speak, even promoting these toxic views.

Just a few weeks back, Howard Dean blathered that Republicans were the white Christian party. The events in Washington Thursday suggest that in reality it is Howard Dean's own Democratic Party which is no longer interested in welcoming America's Jews.

Richard Baehr writes for The American Thinker.