Monday, September 2, 2013

FOLLOW UP ON "The Situation in Syria" POST



Secretary of State John Kerry seems to be very anxious to get the United States involved in the Syrian civil war.  He predicted on “This Week” that Congress will authorize the president to order a military strike on Syria as punishment for the country’s alleged use of chemical weapons against its civilian population last month.
“We are not going to lose this vote,” Kerry said of the coming debate to authorize military action against Syria when Congress returns from recess. “The president of the United States is committed to securing the unity of purpose that he believes strengthens America. And I believe the Congress will see that that’s the responsible thing to do here.”

Speaking from the Rose Garden at the White House Saturday, President Obama said that although he believed he had the authority to order an attack on Syria without the authorization of Congress, he had decided to seek their consent before ordering any such strike on the regime of Bashar al-Assad.
Funny thing about ole swift boat Kerry, he has always had a reputation of being “for it before he was against it” or “against it before he was for it”. 

In 1991, during the debate before the first Gulf War Kerry initially opposed the immediate use of military force to expel Iraqi soldiers from Kuwait.    The United Nations had imposed sanctions on Iraq, and Kerry argued that the sanctions then in place should be given more time to work.

On December 14, 2001, 3 months after the attacks of 9/11, Kerry said on Larry King Live that "I think we clearly have to keep the pressure on terrorism globally.  This doesn't end with Afghanistan by any imagination.  And I think the president has made that clear.  I think we have made that clear.  Terrorism is a global menace.  It's a scourge.  And it is absolutely vital that we continue against, for instance, Saddam Hussein."

Kerry said on October 9, 2002; "I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security."   Kerry also gave a January 23, 2003 speech to Georgetown University saying "Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein.  He is a brutal, murderous dictator; leading an oppressive regime he presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation.  So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real."  

Kerry had spoken before the war about the sorts of weapons many believed Saddam Hussein had.  On the Senate floor on October 9, 2002, he said that "According to the CIA's report, all U.S. intelligence experts agree that Iraq is seeking nuclear weapons. There is little question that Saddam Hussein wants to develop nuclear weapons."

After the invasion of Iraq, when no weapons of mass destruction were found, Kerry strongly criticized Bush, contending that he had misled the country: "When the President of the United States looks at you and tells you something, there should be some trust."

Back in the mid 80s, John Kerry was against President Reagan’s arming of the Nicaraguan anti-Communist Contra forces because, “America should not subvert its values “by funding terrorism to overthrow governments of other countries”.  Yet here he stands, arguing that we should fund and arm the rebels, who have been linked to a known terrorist organization like al-Qaeda, so they can overthrow their government.  (Not to mention the illegal funneling of arms to the Syrian rebels through Benghazi – which still isn’t being discussed or answered for.)

And as for Vietnam, just ask ANY Vietnam Vet his opinion of John Kerry.  Or. I can save you the trouble, just go to this link:  http://www.militarycorruption.com/kerry4.htm

The following comments are just a part of John Kerry’s testimony which was given before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April 1971.

In our opinion and from our experience, there is nothing in South Vietnam which could happen that realistically threatens the United States of America. And to attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom, which those misfits supposedly abuse, is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy, and it is that kind of hypocrisy which we feel has torn this country apart.

We found that not only was it a civil war, an effort by a people who had for years been seeking their liberation from any colonial influence whatsoever, but also we found that the Vietnamese whom we had enthusiastically molded after our own image were hard put to take up the fight against the threat we were supposedly saving them from.

We found most people didn’t even know the difference between communism and democracy. They only wanted to work in rice paddies without helicopters strafing them and bombs with napalm burning their villages and tearing their country apart. They wanted everything to do with the war, particularly with this foreign presence of the United States of America, to leave them alone in peace, and they practiced the art of survival by siding with whichever military force was present at a particular time, be it Viet Cong, North Vietnamese or American.

We found also that all too often American men were dying in those rice paddies for want of support from their allies. We saw first-hand how monies from American taxes were used for a corrupt dictatorial regime. We saw that many people in this country had a one-sided idea of who was kept free by the flag, and blacks provided the highest percentage of casualties. We saw Vietnam ravaged equally by American bombs and search and destroy missions, as well as by Viet Cong terrorism – and yet we listened while this country tried to blame all of the havoc on the Viet Cong. We rationalized destroying villages in order to save them. We saw America lose her sense of morality as she accepted very coolly a My Lai and refused to give up the image of American soldiers who hand out chocolate bars and chewing gum.

We learned the meaning of free fire zones, shooting anything that moves, and we watched while America placed a cheapness on the lives of Orientals. We watched the United States falsification of body counts, in fact the glorification of body counts. We listened while month after month we were told the back of the enemy was about to break. We fought using weapons against” Oriental human beings.” We fought using weapons against those people which I do not believe this country would dream of using were we fighting in the European theater.

We watched while men charged up hills because a general said that hill has to be taken, and after losing one platoon or two platoons they marched away to leave the hill for reoccupation by the North Vietnamese. We watched pride allow the most unimportant battles to be blown into extravaganzas, because we couldn’t lose, and we couldn’t retreat, and because it didn’t matter how many American bodies were lost to prove that point, and so there were Hamburger Hills and Khe Sanhs and Hill 81s and Fire Base 6s, and so many others.

Now we are told that the men who fought there must watch quietly while American lives are lost so that we can exercise the incredible arrogance of Vietnamizing the Vietnamese. Each day to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam someone has to give up his life so that the United States doesn’t have to admit something that the entire world already knows, so that we can’t say that we have made a mistake. Someone has to die so that President Nixon won’t be, and these are his words, “the first President to lose a war.”

 We are asking Americans to think about that because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? We are here in Washington to say that the problem of this war is not just a question of war and diplomacy. It is part and parcel of everything that we are trying as human beings to communicate to people in this country – the question of racism which is rampant in the military, and so many other questions such as the use of weapons; the hypocrisy in our taking umbrage at the Geneva Conventions and using that as justification for a continuation of this war when we are more guilty than any other body of violations of those Geneva Conventions… That is what we are trying to say. It is part and parcel of everything… We are here to ask, and we are here to ask vehemently, where are the leaders of our country? Where is the leadership?

We’re here to ask where are McNamara, Rostow, Bundy, Gilpatrick, and so many others? Where are they now that we, the men they sent off to war, have returned? These are the commanders who have deserted their troops. And there is no more serious crime in the laws of war. The Army says they never leave their wounded. The marines say they never even leave their dead. These men have left all the casualties and retreated behind a pious shield of public rectitude. They’ve left the real stuff of their reputations bleaching behind them in the sun in this country…

But, all those examples were Then, and Syrian is NOW.  Now he believes it is our duty to become involver in their civil war.  What do you think?

This post was a follow up on "The Situation in Syria" which can be found here:


  


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