Whatever it takes! Toothpicks under the fingernails, 12 volt automobile batteries hooked to the testicles, sleep deprivation, I do not care! Whatever it takes to get the information we need to find and kill the terrorists who threatened this country.
Look, if you want to delude yourself into believing that if we don’t torture our enemy combatants, the enemy won’t torture ours, then you go right ahead. But don’t ask me to swallow that load of malarkey. I live in the REAL world where enemies of the United States torture and kill members of our armed forces at every opportunity. In the world in which I live, (the real one) the image of the US is worth spit! And… unless, and until, we get serious about winning the war on terror and commit to whatever means are necessary then we will continue to have our service men and women picked off one, or two, at a time until those jelly spined political prostitutes in Congress force the President to withdraw our troops… in other words… "cut and run". The very idea is sickening to me.
Do, I sound angry? I hope so, because I’m way past angry! I’m fuming at the lack of strength in our Congress to pursue this war much more aggressively. Forget a strategy for withdrawal. We have a strategy! Victory, for heaven’s sake! We win and THEN we come home. If we don’t utterly destroy that mass of cancerous tissue in the human body called “Islamofacists”, we will only find ourselves right back where we are today... with more American lives given, and more blood shed, to finish the job we should have finished this time!
Come on, folks! How difficult is that to understand. Take off the rose-colored glasses and see the world for what it is. A rotten, dangerous place. Hey, we’re the good guys! We’re trying to make the world safe for democracy!
Take a look at the right side of this page, in the sidebar. Notice the yellow box which carries a running total, updated as often as necessary, of the number of terrorist attacks since 9-11. That's reality, Dear Reader.
This is certainly not the America I grew up in. That was an America that would have taken the battle to the enemy’s doorstep and knocked down their house. That was an America that would, and did, use nuclear weapons to save the lives of thousands upon thousands of American lives. That was an America that did not cut and run! That was an America, whose people valued their freedom for they understood what it meant to be free.
I understand there are only 14 members of Congress who have sons or daughters serving in the Middle East. That tell you anything?
We cannot disengage with this enemy. It cannot be done. If we withdraw, the bloodletting will only follow our troops home to the shopping malls, the hotel ballrooms, the schools of our children, the sports arenas, the transportation hubs, the largest cities, and on and on. No, understand folks, this is a war in which the last man standing wins! This war will go on for decades… and then some. As long as there is a nutcase Islamofacist out there he, or she, will come after us. They want you dead! They want me Dead! They want your kids dead! They want America dead, and gone, and in it’s place a Caliphate of Islam in which you will bow your head to the ground five times a day toward Mecca. Is that what you want? Well, is it? For that is exactly what we are trying to stop, right now, with the war in Iraq, and Afghanistan, and remote places all around the globe.
Believe me, there is no alternative for America but victory. We cannot survive defeat. If we lose this war, we lose our country. Everything we are, everything we have been and everything we hope to become in the future wil be gone. There will be no America
So, ask me to rethink my position on the use of torture.
OK. I have re-thought it!
I’m still for it. I’m also for battlefield nukes, and white phosphorous, and “Daisy Cutter” bombs, and whatever else it takes.
There is only one way to fight a war! Fight to win! There is no acceptable alternative. None at all!
“Longstreet”
12 comments:
Maybe we should have tortured Southern Terrorists during the south's war for independence. They commited treason against the U.S.A. Although If we could succeed today I'd vote for it (here in the North).
You conveniently overlook a very importnat fact, Sir, in refering to Confederate soldiers as treasonous. One must be a citizen of the country one is betraying. The Southern/Confederate Soldier was NOT... I repeat... WAS NOT a citizen of the United States. He was a citizen of the Confederate States of America.
The Confederacy had a Constitution, a Supreme Court, a Congress, an Army and a Navy, and several million citizens. She was made up of a land area much larger than that made up of the original 13 colonies. Her population was several times that of the original states.
The South, Sir, was invaded, conquered, and occupied by the armed forces of the United States.
We were denied our "contituional right" to secede.
Sir, with respect, to refer to a Confederate soldier as a traitor is beneath contempt and is not worthy of an American of any color.
As a direct decendent of several Confederate soldiers, sir, I expect an apology from you.
One final thing. If the north attempted to leave the Union today, you can believe the South would not protest, and we sure as hell would not go to war to stop you!
Have a nice day, Sir!
Longstreet
So if I decide to succede and declare my independence and start a war with the America, am I not a traitor? General Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, General Longstreet should have all be hanged for high treason. North succede maybe not, just kick the South's sorry butt again to teach them "Who their daddy is"!
Were not our American forefathers guilty of treason to King George? It all depends what side you are on, our soldiers were viewed as terrorists by British sympathizers. If you win your a revolutionary, a LIBERATOR, or a freedom fighter, but if you loose you are just a treasonist terrorist right or wrong that is how it is, the winners wright the history books. Remember this Mr. Longstreet "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." I am not justifying 9-11, Pearl Harbor or any of that but the entities that attacked, attacked for a reason and we will only know one side of the story. If you do not think that the U.S. bullies foreign sovern nations around the world look at sout & central america and Iraq and look at what the U.S. did to the south if you feel that way about the south being sovern.
Your comments above stand as stark examples of the very thing I warn my audiences about.
Judging from what you have written above, you have been totally taken in by the propaganda taught in out Public Schools and institutions of higher learning (?) today.
That Politically Correct Bovine Scatology has robbed America of her true heritage. It has robbed America’s youth of an abiding love for their country. It has led to this generation of Americans who question whether, or not, America is better than other nations. Whether, or not, America is worthy to be held in high esteem by her people.
Without question, the most response I get on this site is when I write something that would dare praise the South, or the Confederate soldier. Response is nearly always negative. And it is almost always based on incorrect information.
Look, I am unapologetically Southern. Deal with it! If you can’t, then you are no longer welcome on this site. I do not intend to defend my Southern heritage. As a Southerner, I don’t DEFEND anything.
But, when you call my Confederate Ancestors “traitors” you crossed the line. If you actually knew what you were talking about… that would be one redeeming point for you. But, you obviously do not know your history. I don’t mean that “crap” taught you in public school and labeled as US history. You know, that “stuff” they taught you… “watered down” …so as not to offend you tender sensibilities.
The Confederate soldier lost his war, but he gained the respect of the world. Today, 140 years after the guns were silenced at Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia, his praises are sung around the world. His story is told to young military cadets around the world. He is honored, and his ensign is held high, all over the world… save IN HIS OWN COUNTRY.
You see, I’m something of a throwback to days gone by. I hold the period of the Great War Between the States as a special time in this country… and the world. Everywhere I speak I ask that Southern people claim their history, their heritage. It is a wonderful heritage. I ask historians to tell it as it happened. The good and the bad. Leave nothing out. Tell it all.
Today the history of the Confederate soldier is either the object of crude jokes, or is not allowed to be spoken of in public, especially in our schools.
Confederate General Patrick Cleburne, summed it up in his amazing foresight a hundred years, or more, ago. When speaking of the possible surrender of the CSA he spoke the following: “Surrender means that the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be trained by Northern school teachers; will learn from northern school books THEIR version of the war; will be impressed by all influences of history and to regard our gallant dead as traitors, and our maimed veterans as fit subjects for derision”
He went on to say: “ It is said slavery is all we are fighting for, and if we give it up we give up all. Even if that were true, which we deny, slavery is not all our enemies are fighting for. It is merely the pretense to establish sectional superiority and a more centralized form of government and to deprive us of our rights and liberties.” Thus said Gen Pat Cleburne of the Confederate States Army.
The Confederate soldier fought half starved, in clothing that was threadbare, and, more likely than not, he was barefooted. Even with all these insurmountable problems the Confederate Soldier was one of the finest warriors to ever take the field of battle, in any army… in any war.
Who was the Confederate Soldier? He was white, he was black, he was brown, he was red, and he was Jew and Gentile and Hispanic. There were, in the ranks, Europeans who crossed the ocean to join with the Confederate forces in the great struggle for Independence.
As far as the mixture of the cultures and races, the Confederate Army was far more integrated than the Union Army,"
10, 000 Jews served the Confederacy as combat soldiers. As a matter of fact the first Confederate Jew to be killed in the war was Albert Lurie Moses of Charlotte, NC. The largest Jewish community in America, in 1860, was in Charleston, SC.
There were a number of Chinese American serving as Confederate Combat Soldiers in Louisiana.
There also were, as I said earlier, Hispanic Confederates. Col. Santos Benavides, a former Texas Ranger, city attorney and mayor of Laredo, Texas, commanded the 33rd Texas Cavalry, while Gen. Refugio Benavides protected what was known as the Confederacy of the Rio Grande.
Recent Irish Catholic immigrants also chose to fight for the South.
There were American Indians serving as Combat troops for the Confederacy. One of our great Confederate generals, Stan Waite, was a Cherokee Indian.
Thousands of Black, that's what I said, "Black" Confederate soldiers served the Confederacy. There were 36 Black Confederate soldiers with General Lee when he surrendered at Appomatox Courthouse in Virginia.
When Ft. Fisher fell in January of 1865 (just a short distance from where I sit as I write this) there were 4 Black Confederate combat soldiers taken prisoner by federal troops. These were not slaves! They were FREE black men. They were taken to Point Lookout Prison, in Maryland, and later released.
Why does this come as a surprise to you? Because it is no longer taught in our schools and Universities. Why? Because, it does not suit the purpose of those who would relegate the South to a place of lesser esteem in the hearts and minds of all Americans. The superiority of the elitists is threatened by the facts of that era. They cannot abide the truth, because as the scriptures say, “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” They can’t take the chance that we Southerners ever learn that we truly ARE the sons and daughters of heroes. We just might begin to believe we are just as good as the rest of America and that would ruin their well laid plans to continue to keep us in some state of submission by continuously beating our psyches and our children’s self esteem with untruths and, please forgive my bluntness, …outright lies!
That little army you like to laugh at, that army Hollywood dearly loves to make the butt of all sorts of jokes… was NO JOKE. That Southern army, all volunteers, took on a fledgling world superpower! That scraggly looking army, often barefooted and hungry, clothed in whatever they could find, fought the Army of the invading North to a bloody standstill for four years, the four bloodiest years in the history of this country. The young men of the Confederacy threw themselves at the enemy with a ferocity that is still legendary to this day.
Their history of the Confederate Soldier is legendary, mythological, and epic in its scope. Their story deserves to be told. Told as it happened and told often. Their's is a story of sheer bravery, and courage, with no equal in the annals of time.
They paid the price for their bravery and courage. Their losses were horrendous.
At the Battle of Cold Harbor, 7000 Americans were killed in 20 minutes. If you add the total killed for all the wars the United States has been involved in, since her birth, that total will not be greater than the total of Americans killed in the War Between the States.
North Carolina lost more men in that war than any other state in the Confederacy. 40,000 men dead. Let me try to put that into perspective for you as well. The US spent roughly ten years in Vietnam. In that time, American losses were 58,000 men dead…in ten years. In 4 years, less than half the length of the Vietnam war, North Carolina lost 40,000 of her men. An entire generation of our young men gone.
The cream of an entire generation of Americans was wiped from the face of the earth. Gone from this world. Gone from their families. Gone from a society, which needed them so much.
Who knows what accomplishments were lost to the shot and shell and cold steel of the bayonet. How can we know that one of those men could not have advanced medicine to find a cure for the diseases that ravage us today? How can we know that one of those young men wouldn’t have written the Great American Novel, or preached the sermon that would change the lives of murderous convicts, or painted the next Mona Lisa, or became the greatest President to ever lead this nation, and on and on….?
We can’t know. We will never know. Any chance of that happening died with those men on some bloddy battlefield as two great Nations, the USA and the CSA, tore each other apart.
Something compelled these men to take up arms and march into the jaws of death. Men don’t just do that. It’s not a natural act. Men do not just throw away their God-given lives! But, they will offer their lives up for a Cause they deem so important, to them and their families, that their very lives are secondary.
So why did thousands upon thousands of young men, the cream of Southern youth, leave their families and march off to war with the near certainty of death looking them square in the face? The answer most often heard, when the question was put to surviving Veterans, was… because the Union Army was “down here!”
Those men you call traitors, died in honor. Their dreams, whether on the battlefield, or, of old age, were filled with the horrors of war. They deserve respect. They earned the respect of the world. Their deeds are celebrated all over the world. Yet, here in America, they are nearly forgotten.
Who were those men? Look around you. The Southerner of today carries the same blood as the Soldiers of the Confederacy, the same DNA. We are echoes of the fiercest warrior to ever fight in any war, in any army, anywhere.
Ann Coulter, a world-renowned columnist, commentator, and writer, has said of the Southern male: “It there truly is an American Warrior class…. It is the American Southern male.”
The Southern man has been at the forefront of every battle, in every war, the US has taken part in. As the great Abrams’ battle tanks flew across the desert sands of Iraq, my heart leapt to see, flying proudly from the radio aerials, high above the tanks, the Battle Flag of the Confederacy, the Saint Andrew’s Cross. One soldier was quoted as saying that had Hussein known the entire army of the Old Confederacy had come against him he would have surrendered outright.
Even in the far corners of the earth the Confederate soldier is known and his deeds are spoken of with awe and reverence. Except here, in his own country.
“Half clad, half armed, often half fed, without money and without price, the Confederate soldier fought against the resources of the world. When at last his flag was furled and his arms were grounded in defeat, the cause for which he had struggled was lost, but he had won the faceless victory of soldiership.”
As the years go by and we become more distant from the Great War for Southern Independence, as the intellectuals on our college campuses re-write history to suit themselves, and as the Politically Correct Crowd continues to push their agenda to trivialize all things Southern, we are losing sight of our Southern heroes. Their historic deeds are being buried.
Things have surely changed. I can remember that as a lad in High school, on Friday nights, when the community gathered at the local High School for the weekly football game, the crowd would stand as the Star Spangled Banner was played by the school band and the crowd would remain standing as the wonderful song “Dixie” followed hot on the heels on the first national anthem. Then a great round of applause would roll through the stadium and the game would begin. Today, that same school forbids the wearing of any piece of clothing with a Confederate icon… of any kind… on it.
I am truly ashamed of my alma mater. Just a few hundred yards from that school is a mass grave of American Revolutionary soldiers massacred by the British Cavalry Commander Tarleton as they dared to fight The British crown for our right to free speech. A right those men, who were the grandfathers of the Confederate soldiers, were willing to die for… a right denied us today, and denied those kids just down the road from that huge mound which holds the remains of the men who were willing to fight and die for that freedom.
Do not dare question my pride as a Southerner, or my pride in my Confederate ancestors. They are as real to me, and alive to me, today as they were 140 years ago. The blood of those brave men flows in my veins and in the veins of my daughter and my grandson and granddaughter and all the families of the South. It is the blood of Heroes.
It is so sad that you feel so threatened by the Southerner’s knowledge of who they are, and what they are, that you feel you must denigrate them in order to make yourselves feel superior.
Your attitude reflects that of the Northern politicians in the Congress of 1860. That attitude is what brought this country to the bloodiest conflict, ever, on this continent.
Do not EVER presume to denigrate the Southerner, or the Confederate soldier, on this site again.
“Longstreet”
"Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it."
- H.L. Mencken
"The dangerous patriot...drifts into chauvinism and exhibits blind enthusiasm for military actions."
- Colonel James A. Donovan, Marine Corps
"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious."
- General Smedley D. Butler, Marine Corps
I would answer Mr. Mencken that I HAVE been paid for it. The freedom, and opportunities, and security, this country has provided me, since my birth, is so much more than one could possibly pay back.
As far as the comments of the two warriors, they are correct. All warriors hate war. That is what makes thm good at what they do... make war.
Let me ask you... when did it become un-American to love your country? When did it become un-American to want to see to the security of your country? When did it become unfashionable to speak proudly, in public, of your love of country? If you can give me a date, I can show you, exactly, when America began her demise.
In the America I grew up in all this was encouraged. It was called good citizenship.
What a sad state America finds herself in today. I truly fear for the future of the republic.
Longstreet
Wo Wo Wo Mr Longstreet.... What I meant was and yuo actually supprted that is that ""the winners wright the history books. Remember this Mr. Longstreet "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."" is right out of my second quote I am sorry for upsetting you but not sorry for my words. If I was alive back then I probably would have fought on the side of the South (being the liberal rebel I am). Look they were building a Perkins in my area and found a colonial period cemetary in the woods, now they put flags on all the vet's graves as they should. I wen and looked and took my son to read some of the inscriptions one that caught me most was "My life for my country" I told my son, what a concept. If someone said that today they'd say that person was nuts. But you see all these people well, fighting, and robbing over an x-box 360. that's what is really nuts, Thse neo-cons. are destroying the country and the people today get what they deserve, only problem is I gotta suffer, i can't delude myself enough to not care.
...another man's freedom fighter? Beheading is a tactic of the freedom fighter? Torture and rape rooms are the tools of one who fights for freedom? Gulags and gas chambers are the instruments of advancing a cause of freedom? Sir, you should reevaluate your world view and decide if you are in the right country to feel that the terrorists we are killing by the bushel are fighters who yearn to be free.
It is in their eyes that they are fughting for a world free of American Imperialism. That is their view. What is the difference, we torture but that's ok, It is us who occupies sovergn nations (Iraq) just being the latest. Maybe we need to see things as the world views us. We aren't hated because we are free, we are hated because not only are we the richest nation of the world, we are the greediest. I pray everyday that this once great nation will wake up and realize it's true place as a world leader not a world dominator.
Torture, Behead, Rape, kill children, you mean like the American army did to the Native Americans.
Just a thought what if (God forbid) and I am being serious here, you tortured someone (interrogated) for months and learned you had the wrong guy. What if (God Forbid) it was yuo who was tortured for months and you really knew ythey had the wrong guy. What if it was your wife, son or daughter? Just think man mistakes can be made and irreperable harm done to the victim and if the interrogator has a conscience to him or her too.
God bless.
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