Gathering of Eagles

Media

Disdain for the Military May Cost U.S. the War

Posted On: July 2, 2007 at 3:08 PM By: < Former Member >

The following article, written by Kevin Ferris of the Philadelphia Inquirer, nails down some interesting points. Must read of the day.

Best-selling author Robert "Buzz" Patterson isn't subtle when it comes to titles.

The first book by the talk-radio host, a retired Air Force colonel and one-time White House military aide, was Dereliction of Duty: The Eyewitness Account of How Bill Clinton Compromised America's National Security.

This week sees the release of War Crimes: The Left's Campaign to Destroy Our Military and Lose the War on Terror.

That lack of subtlety continues inside:

"At their nation's time of need in this global ideological battle, the American Left has climbed into bed with our enemies," he writes. "They demoralize our brave men and women in uniform and drain our nation of its resolve to fight by convincing politicians and the general public that this is a war we cannot endure fighting any longer."

He names five elements in the "unholy alliance": Democratic politicians, popular culture, leftist academics, the big liberal media, and foundations and nongovernmental organizations that fund antiwar groups. (In the paperback version, Patterson can add congressional Republicans, including Sens. Richard G. Lugar and George V. Voinovich, who this week declared their lack of faith in the troop-surge strategy - never mind that the last brigade only recently arrived in country.)

Not everyone in these areas disdains the military or roots for the other side in the war on terror, Patterson admits in an interview. But plenty do, and they have been active and vocal enough that they have drawn the more moderate voices into a majority for defeat. Unfortunately, he adds, they have been inadvertently aided by the Bush administration's own mistakes and the horribly ineffective communications of both the White House and the Pentagon.

Some readers would have been satisfied with Patterson's listing the leftist sins and sinners from the Vietnam era to today, and his detailing of the last 40 years of anti-military and anti-American movements that have found renewed purpose with the war in Iraq.

But that wasn't the point. Patterson wanted to demonstrate the real-world consequences of those working to undermine U.S. efforts. To do so, he went to the front lines to interview about 300 troops during a visit to Iraq in 2005.

Two things stood out from those interviews.

One, the "off the charts high" morale of the vast majority of the soldiers and Marines in the field, and their firm belief both in the rightness of the cause and their ability to ultimately prevail - if given the chance.

Two, an increasing feeling of being "undermined and unappreciated," and the corrosive, alienating effects of those feelings.

Here's one Army first sergeant's reaction to media coverage and leftist opposition of the war:

"You are creating greater risk for me personally and you create added danger for my soldiers. You feed into enemy (yes, enemy) propaganda efforts in yielding unlimited access to pre-staged voices with calculated intent. . . . You diminish and demean our service."

More dire is a quote from an Army master sergeant:

"The enemy is becoming the very people whom we defend with our lives. And they do not realize it. But in denouncing our actions, denouncing our leaders, denouncing the war we live and fight, they are isolating the military from society . . . and they are becoming our enemy."

And that was said two years before Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) declared the war lost, or questioned the competence of Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and the reliability of Gen. David Petreaus, whom the Senate unanimously confirmed this year to lead the change in strategy in Iraq.

Patterson asks in the book, "What country sends its men and women to war through national decree knowing some will give their all in sacrifice - yet withers in resolve at the first signs of difficulty and abandons the will to fight? . . .

"What country's duly elected politicians, often from both sides of the aisle, shamelessly exploit a conflict they voted to authorize and, in doing so, barter the sacrifice of American soldiers for political capital?"

With more votes on Iraq funding coming, it will soon be clear whether those politicians, and others whom Patterson calls "the enemy within," will further isolate the military - and in the process lose a war.

Posted on July 2, 2007 at 3:08 PM by < Former Member >

To:

I am not even going to comment on this because if i get started i'll go on a rant worse than Dennis Miller.....Every time i think about or read these pieces i get ..SO PISSED OFF!!!! IT TAKES ME 30 MIN. TO CALM DOWN!!!!!!

1 Posted On: July 2, 2007 at 5:34 PM By: MikeBSuffolk