THE WAR ABROAD AND THE WAR AT HOME By Edward L. Daley (7/03/04)

(Mr. Daley is the Owner of the Daley Times-Post.  To view more of Mr, Daley's writings please visit his site)

With the early handover of sovereignty by American forces to the new  provisional government in Iraq, a tremendous landmark has been reached in our war against terrorists and the countries that support them. This event is clearly an important victory for the United States and for freedom loving people worldwide, something which no sane person can deny. Of course, sanity is not always the order of the day when one regards the 'but-monkeys' of that new flat-earth society oft' referred to as the mainstream media.

What's a but-monkey you ask? Pay attention to the spelling there, because it's not what you may have first suspected. According to radio talk show host, Laura Ingraham, a but-monkey is the kind of journalist who seems incapable of ever reporting any positive news about the war on terrorism without tainting his remarks with a great big, negativity-ladened BUT! She didn't put it exactly that way herself, but that's the gist of the thing.

You see this all the time these days in newspapers like the New York Times, a thriving haven for but-monkeys and Bush-bashers alike. For instance, in an article recently published by the "newspaper of record" titled 'A Secretive Transfer in Iraq', the author of the piece writes, "Moving the transfer date was a sensible precaution against anticipated insurgent attacks. BUT it underscores how arbitrary the original date, June 30, was all along." People like this just can't bring themselves to ever give credit where credit is due... when the credit is due Republicans, that is. I counted seven of these 'but' statements in this
one, brief article, each of which undermined the positive aspects of the story, spinning the whole thing irrevocably toward some imagined doom and gloom scenario.

Now, I'm not suggesting that simply using the word 'but' is a bad thing, BUT when it's used over and over again for the purpose of accentuating the most negative aspects of our war effort, while simultaneously glossing over the more positive developments in that regard, the people doing all the 'but'ing need to start 'but'ing out! You see, but-monkeys are one group of people in this country who have decided to place their allegiance to a particular socio-political philosophy above any consideration for the well-being of their fellow countrymen.

They are, sadly, not the only group of this kind though. Even a relaxed glance at a television newscast nowadays will expose you to several more, from out-of-control activist judges to loudmouth, drug-addled, Hollywood phonies who couldn't think their way out of a paper bag without the assistance of a professional director. Smarmy propagandist weasels like Michael Moore, who mask their contempt for common decency by screaming 'freedom of speech' every time they are called to the mat for their perversions of the truth, would fit into the latter of these two groups, although Mr. Moore himself might well constitute a separate
group all on his own.

By any means, thanks to these and other parasites, as well as our government controlled institutions of lower learning, America is fast becoming a country of professional whiners, welfare junkies, litigious crap-shooters, smut merchants, illiterate know-it-alls, and propaganda peddlers of the basest sort.

That having been said, at least the U.S. as a whole has not sunk to the depths of countries like modern-day (Vichy) France, which has done more in recent years to further the causes of tyranny and injustice around the world than most full-blown dictatorships have. I happen to think that Jacques Chirac is almost as despicable as Saddam Hussein, but that's just me. Granted, we've got our own governmental embarrassments to live down, like the treasonous Congressman Jim McDermott and the ever-contemptible Senator Robert (KKK) Byrd, however, when the chips are down, most American politicians are still able to recognize pure evil when they see it, and are usually prepared take action against it. That does not seem to be the case where the French are concerned.

And, unfortunately, millions of people in the United States as well, either cannot or will not see evil for what it is. That is as great a threat to our survival as evil itself, in my opinion, yet the but-monkeys and their ilk constantly attempt to draw moral equivalences
between us and the barbaric murderers who've declared war on our country, often heaping criticism upon our leaders and our soldiers in the field, while they understate the horrific acts of our enemies. Heck, most of them won't even call the bastards what they are... terrorists! These equivocating hacks habitually refer to the vicious cretins we're fighting as "insurgents" or "militants", adopting a sort of Orwelian newspeak that makes me want to hunt them down, one by one, and thrash them to within an inch of their lives with the tightly rolled sports sections of their own rag newspapers.

And, as if having to deal with the menace of the 'fourth estate' weren't enough of a burden, we also have to contend with exasperating rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court. On Monday, the same day that the Iraqis took charge of their own country, a majority of the high court's justices decided that enemy combatants being detained at Camp X-ray in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba should be allowed to use American courts to contest their captivity and treatment. Well isn't THAT special! I'm sure that
none of these poor, misunderstood fellows or their chums in the ACLU would ever dream of exploiting this situation in a way that might jeopardize our national security. *sarcasm off*

Since when do a bunch of non-uniformed belligerents from afghanistan (or God knows where else) have the right to challenge the decisions of the U.S. government in our own courts? That's a rhetorical question of course, because the answer is all too obvious... since Monday, that's when! I guess what I should have asked is what the hell were these judges thinking?

You know, if we put half the effort into destroying terrorists that we do into making sure the ones we catch are well treated, people like Osama Bin Laden would be history right now. Sure, we can sit around all day, every day immersing ourselves in the grayer areas of our laws as they pertain to the treatment of enemy combatants, opining about who gets what rights, and how much power should be afforded our president during times of war. We can debate these things until the cows come home, but eventually we are going be forced to confront the fact that not all of the peace-time laws we've taken for granted in the past
necessarily apply since the attacks of September 11, 2001.

That's not a pleasant pill for any American to swallow, I know, but if we aren't willing to accept narrowly applied exceptions to one or two of those laws now, as we have on more than one occasion in the past, we may find ourselves facing a situation wherein our government suspends, indefinitely, more than just a few of our most basic rights. Don't think it can happen here? Think again. The imposition of martial law is not beyond the realm of possibility in the U.S., and if just one of the people currently being held in a cage down in Gitmo is released because he's able to use our own laws against us, and then later he manages to
detonate a nuclear device in midtown Manhattan, you can say good-bye to a whole bunch of rights you probably never thought you could lose... like the right to walk outside after dark without being shot.