Foreign policy
Long-haired commie-pinko's are sabotaging military recruitment
July 15, 2005
MYTH: Small, independent pacifist groups are undermining the US military's recruitment efforts
The latest attack on the U.S. by its Fifth Column enemies is aimed at stopping the Armed Forces from enlisting new recruits. Faced with a flagging anti-war movement, leftist agitators have shifted gears and are now subverting the War on Islamist Terror by trying to destroy America 's ability to maintain a fighting force. Though so far limited in success.
...Nation-wide there are hundreds of small organizations involved in this counter-recruitment movement. They formulate strategies based on those of prominent traditional pacifist groups. Almost all of them are directed by a handful of well established “social justice” and “peace” groups with long histories of anti-U.S., pro-communist and pro-totalitarian alignments and agendas. All the larger pacifist and radical groups work with each other, with the smaller groups and with the Legal Left to coordinate what amounts to a broad national movement.
...
But the movement's overall effectiveness against the Armed Forces will ultimately depend on a favorable Supreme Court Ruling in the fall. Should that Court strike down the Solomon Amendment, the counter-recruitment forces will mount an all-out charge - one that will attempt to plunge a stake into the heart of America 's military might.
-- -- Rocco DiPippo, “The Left's War Against the Military At Home”, FrontPageMagazine.com, July 11, 2005
REALITY
If leftist propaganda really is the cause of diminishing military recruitments, this could explain the chicken hawk phenomenon, since most neo-cons where either lefties, or partied with lefties in college. In reality, anyone who truly believes that supposed leftist fringe groups with communist ties are causing the US military to miss its recruitment numbers is crazier than Rush Limbaugh in the throes of narcotics withdrawal, or Bill O'Reilly after a few whiskey shooters at Scores. These feeble attempts to lay blame on leftist phantoms for a situation their own commander-in-chief created should be viewed with great caution. Which do you think is more likely—young men and women refusing to sign-up to serve in the US Armed Forces because 1) some hippie-dippy organization that promotes itself at World Bank and WTO protests tells them not to or 2) they see what is going on in Iraq, know about W's misuse of intelligence and his trumped up story about why the US should go to war with Iraq, have heard horror stories about inadequate supplies and bungled planning from their peers, and do not want to help create a breeding ground for terrorists in the Middle East? Which seems more likely?
The truth is that 60% of Americans now oppose the United States' war in Iraq. This is not because of leftist propaganda, it's because of the administration blatantly lied to sell the war, and then bungled the execution of the war after that. It's funny (in a tragic and frightening way) how the right can't accept the cause of today's recruitment failures? What about some of the tactics the military uses to conduct its recruitment efforts? Do you think either of these facts contributes to the problem? The Washington Post recently reported that “for the first time since 2001, the Army began the fiscal year in October with only 18.4 percent of the year's target of 80,000 active-duty recruits already in the pipeline. That amounts to less than half of last year's figure and falls well below the Army's goal of 25 percent….”
Later in the article a Lieutenant General in the Army recounts that fact that many potential recruits are citing the Iraq war as a reason for their hesitancy to join.
The other inherent issue with the right's contention that small groups are undermining the military is the right's atavistic fascist tendencies. Ignorance of the constitution not withstanding, freedom of speech and a free press are two of the founding principles of this country as well as being linchpins of the liberties that the right claims to champion. If pacifist groups are attempting to dissuade young people from serving in the US Armed Forces, so what? Shouldn't the truth prevail in a free and open exchange of ideas? Are there not groups fringe groups on the extreme right trying to recruit young people for ascetic, ultra-religious lives? Or does the right want to the US to return to the 1920's, to a time when the Schenck vs. the US Supreme Court case gave the country the term “clear and present danger” under which the government could silence any supposed dissenters? Even this position was later modified to only apply to violent acts, not the spreading of ideas.
If pacifist fringe groups start blowing up buildings or taking hostages to get their points across, maybe the government should start investigating. But until this happens, the current administration should concentrate on getting their recruitment numbers up through a better and more transparent foreign policy. What a novel idea!
Myth: Continued support for the Iraq war equals continued support for the war on terrorism, and withdrawal from Iraq equals surrender to terrorists like the ones who struck London
[We] feel confident there will be no repeat of what happened after the al Qaeda train bombings in Madrid, March 2004, when panicked Spaniards voted into office a government pledged to placate terrorist murderers.
Howard Dean & Co., meanwhile, have been taking advantage of America's historic impatience with foreign entanglements — to say nothing of the media's fascination with the Iraqi butcher's bill — to undercut the president's moral authority to wage a just and necessary war.
In another time, that would be called giving aid and comfort to the enemy— or something a bit more harsh.
It is one thing to serve as the loyal opposition — but it is quite another to undermine an anti-terrorism policy that was ratified by the American people a scant seven months ago.-- New York Post, Battleground:London, July 8, 2005
The terrorists expect a repeat of Madrid, with British support for free Iraq collapsing. But Londoners aren't madrileños.
-- Ralph Peters, Pyrrhic Terror, New York Post, July 8, 2005
Reality
The government of Spain
never pledged to placate terrorist murders. Their position, both prior
to and after the Madrid bombings was that Spain’s involvement
in the aggressive invasion of Iraq would inflame Muslim opinion against
them, thus increasing their risk of terrorist attack, not reducing
it. Spanish voters saw the foolishness of claiming the Iraq war was
keeping them safe, after the terrorists struck in Madrid. The New
York Post, makes the classic conservative mistake (we think it generous
of us to assume it is unintentional), of assuming that because terrorists
favor withdrawal from Iraq that to do so is to placate them. We can
decide that something is in our best interest regardless of what the
terrorists would prefer. To define our entire foreign policy in opposition
to whatever the terrorists believe simply because they believe it
is a true capitulation to them of the very worst kind. More importantly,
the war in Iraq is a profound diversion from the real war on terror.
Al Qaeda had no connections to the Hussein regime. Can Donald Rumsfeld
say the same thing? Now that we're tied down in a quagmire fighting
an insurgency that we have no functional strategy to fight, we have
little military leverage to stop Iran and North Korea (both countries
that do support terrorists) from producing nuclear weapons.
Secondly, the Post repeats the conservative canard that criticizing
a policy is the same thing as undermining the government’s ability
to carry out said policy. Giving aid or comfort to the enemy, as referenced
in the penal code, obviously is intended to mean material aid and
comfort, not the psychological comfort the Post assumes the Iraqi
insurgent’s derive from Howard Dean’s political pronouncements.
To oppose a policy and to undermine it is not the same thing. The
Post’s accusations are sloppy and inaccurate.
