Redstate

History has shown us time and time again how out of touch George McGovern was. Thank God the American people had the good sense to reelect Richard Nixon and continue the Vietnam war. That worked out really great.

Wasnt Medea one of the gorgons, sister of Medusa, who turned brave soldiers into stone?

the media plasters the anti war politicians all over the place, but barely gives a nod to the Liebermans who are hawkish democrats.

Karl Rove could not have dreamed up a better DNC Chairman. What an utter and complete doofus. He plays well to the unelectable wing of the Democratic party. It would be as if we had Alan Keyes as RNC chair.

Best recent move by Howard the Duck -- doubling down on the "USA will lose in Iraq" two weeks before the most important election yet. The fact that Hillary, John Kerry, and Murtha have all done the same is priceless. History will judge them harshly. Save their recent quotes in your scrap book so your grandkids can laugh at them and thank you for voting for re-electing Bush.

HOWIE! HOWIE! HOWIE! He sets the bar so low that even the Republican majority in Congress should be able to clear it in 2006.

I believe that she was from Southern Russia (heh), where she got all tangled up in that Jason of the Argonauts story.

I don't think that Medea Benjamin is as much a Marxist as a Narcissist.  I don't think that she is a Democrat -- she and her gang invaded the floor of the Democratic Convention last year and "protested" to the point that they were physically removed.

Her name is one that you tend to hear mentioned at the same time as that of Ramsey Clark.  Both of these people are toxic and sometimes irrational, the kind of people who move from issue to issue, wherever the spotlight is, trying to get in front of cameras with their histrionics.

This being said, I don't know why Howard Dean allowed himself to be photographed with those t-shirts.  I don't know what -- if any -- relationship he has to the group Code Pink, but he should make sure that he's a little more careful about this stuff ...

Finally, though, with respect to the Iraq War, I think that a majority of Americans have views about the conflict that are in line with that of Code Pink, even though it's very unlikely that they would sing the praises of the Sandinistas or Fidel Castro, as Benjamin has done.

So, you're right -- big mistake, probably, for Dean to be in front of the cameras with these folks.

Oh the HORROR!   Sending medicine to a country we are rebuilding and trying to turn into a democracy, what were they thinking?  

Sheesh.

As a former Democrat who voted for McGovern, I could not understand (at the time) why anyone would vote for "I am not a crook" Nixon (who I felt was grossly immoral for various reasons anyway) and later was headed for impeachment if he did not resign from office.  As my views on abortion & politics in general changed with time, I later voted for Regean.  I still don't know who was the WORST person to choose from between Nixon & McGovern.

I feel the Democratic Party has become the immoral/amoral party in the USA trying very hard, in general, to undermine the biblical morality this nation was (once upon a time) founded upon.  Unforunately, the Republican Party is all to often not far behind them.

...and who was President when Vietnam "fell?"

When Code Pink sent medical supplies to Falluja, it was under seige by US Marines. I suppose the "other side" bit slipped by you.

But don't worry. I'm sure you'll find another site where they strive to raise inanity and obtuseness to an art form.

in more ways than one.  From Walter Duranty in the 30's to establisment defense of Alger Hiss,Socratic declarations of the need to understand the Soviet Union, defense of Mao right thru the 70's, and forget about Castro and the Sandinistas,right up to today, there is a pure fascination on the left, and in the Dem party, for Marxixt-Lenninist practice and  power.  I realize that this is all for our own good and our best interests keep Democrats up at night, but sometimes the dark though slips into my otherwise innocent mind that the attraction is supplied by an admiration for the methods and rationale of force and repression.  

Dr. O about a couple of points: firstly, what makes you believe, in spite of all evidence to the contrary--including numerous protestations by the Founding Fathers that they were extraordinarily uncomfortable with religious demagoguery--that our country was founded on anything other than British common law and a very large dose of Enlightenment genuflecting towards ancient Greece? And secondly, how do you reconcile your notion that the Democratic party represents the party of "immorality" when the vast majority of Democrats in this country are active members of one organized religion or another? Is it that you don't know what the word morality means? Or that you don't like the fact that it doesn't mean what you wish it meant?

There are, in fact, groups that provide medical care and aid to people on both sides of a conflict.  I'm thinking of groups like the International Red Cross, who try very hard to maintain an apolitical position and provide aid without regards to "the other side" and the like.

If you have a political, anti-war agenda with regards to what is going on in Iraq, your place for action is Washington, D.C., not Fallujah.

But we didn't send supplies directly to Hitler's house.

You exemplify the chief lack in a leftist's outlook: discrimination.

the horrid things you say about Code Pink can't possibly be true; pink is such a cute, cozzy, friendly color.

Is there no one left in the press who gives a d*mn about this country?

Can't you read

This is, after all, the group that raised $600,000 last year to aid terrorists in Fallujah. As Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin put it at the time, "I don't know of any other case in history in which the parents of fallen soldiers collected medicine...for the families of the `other side'."

The 'other side' was engaged in active combat against US soldiers and Marines.

Dr. O,

The Democrats controlled the House of Representatives and the Senate when this country turned its collective back on the South Vietnamese. It is well-documented, if not, thanks to the MSM, well known, that Nixon had no choice but to withdraw since the Democrats in Congress refused to fund the war. This was Johnson's war, not Nixon's.  

'and who was President when Vietnam "fell?" '

This is like saying Truman won WWII all by himself and Roosevelt had done nothing.

Whatinheck was Dean thinking?  He's not dumb, by any stretch of the imagination, but this...

When his name came up for DNC chair, I honestly thought that he was a good choice for them; enthusiastic, driven, had a good name with his base.  And then he does stuff like this.  Does the man not have that little voice in his head that says "Are you sure that's a good idea?" at strategic moments?

...that most Americans want the Islamic Nazis to win in Iraq, which is Code Pink's position.

Please try again. You win RedState.org. Home Game, however, for trying to defend the Code Pink Sturmabteilungen who gave $600,000 to Islamic fascisti to help them defray the cost of killing our men.

but he has proven repeatedly that he does not think well (or speak well) on the fly.

Medea was a myth figure associated with Jason of "Jason & the Argonauts".  But her most notable literary significance is her status as heroine/monster in Euripides's Medea, in which she murders her children to get revenge on a wayward husband.  The spectre of someone named "Medea" going on about the anti-war actions of the mother of dead soldiers goes beyond ironic straight into macabre.  You'd think her friends would have talked her into changing her name before stepping into the public eye in such a fashin.

... that Code Pink didn't realize that the Ba'athists and the Ansar al-Islam crowd weren't going to use the cash that the Caffe Latte People gave them for IED's, weapons, AK's, and RPG's. Medea Benjamin knew exactly what she was doing, and exactly how providing medicine to the insurgents would allow them to defray the cost of purchasing weaponry used to kill Marines and U.S. Infantry.

Medea Benjamin is a traitor. Period. Let's try to call the Duck the Duck.

The extreme Left is a moneyed extreme Left. Dean doesn't care if the Left sends cashier's checks to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's basement. As long as they call it "medical aid for suffering Iraqi families", Dean will rationalize it.

The point that is lost on Republicans here at RedState is this: today's extreme Left is bankrolled by vast sums of money from very wealthy left wing individuals in Hollywood, the Bay Area, Palo Alto, Seattle, Portland, and New York/Boston/Connecticut. Dean knows this. Dean also knows that this fundraising machine may equal what the Clintons can command, especially given the fundraising prowess of George Soros. The DNC is slowly, but surely, coming under the control of extremely wealthy Left Wing versions of Aurec Goldfinger and Dr. Blowfeldt who made their money in Dot Coms, computers, Wall Street, Hollywood, and in the Legal community.

People say that the Clintons are all powerful. They are not. The extreme Left has enormous resources. That's why Howard Dean doesn't blow off the Moonbats.

The Moonbats have money. Moonbats with money will attract politicians like Dean. What is good for us is that a craven, unprincipled politician like Hillary Clinton will eventually want to dip into this cash. Naturally, she will have to make her Faustian Bargain to do so. When she does, to cash in her chips, she'll find that Dr. Rice, or Giuliani, or McCain, or Allen will be the banker.

There's a huge price for tarrying with the Moonbats. Hillary Clinton thinks she doesn't have to pay the Danegeld. She cannot escape from the nature of her party, however. It is not 1992. As Christopher Hitchens once wrote in another time and place, there is literally, "no one left to lie to."

...but they seem amazingly bad at turning it into votes.

As to Sen. Clinton... I'm reminded that the activists had to talk themselves into liking Sen. Kerry (they wanted former Gov. Dean, the ones that weren't holding out for Rep. Kuchinich).  If it were up to them, they wouldn't have sent him up against Pres. Bush - except that it wasn't up to them, no matter how much money that they threw at the problem. I think that Clinton's waiting and seeing whether there's a hard fall in '06 for the Democrats before she goes out swinging at the low-hanging fruit, to thoroughly mix the metaphor.

Just saying, that's all.

I don't know everything about Code Pink or Medea Benjamin, no.  However, I do not consider her, or Ramsey Clark or the Democracy Now folks to be, at all, part of the Reality-Based Community.  They are operating exclusively within the bounds of their own fantastic ideology.

I doubt whether she would allow herself to consider the idea that the money that they donated went to fight U.S. forces.  Everything that these folks do, they believe is right.  They commit no error.  Everything is done in the name of Truth, Justice, Freedom, etc., etc., etc.

This is a flaw shared by ideologues on both sides of the debate:  Commitment to a philosophy to such a strong degree that they are willing to pursue it to self-defeatism.  Not my favorite thing.

The most frequently quoted book by members of the Constitutional Convention and by members of the early US Federal Congress was the Bible.  It was the ultimate authority they looked to for guidance in forming our laws, British common law not withstanding.  We broke with Britian on the basis that it was God that establishes governments on earth and that when those governments so abuse their power as to be in irredeemable conflict with God's Law (as found in the Bible)...which is what they felt King Goeoge did...then they had the right to cast off such government.  This is something basic any American should know.  Remember, one common battle cry was "We have no King, but King Jesus."

As for ..."how do you reconcile your notion that the Democratic party represents the party of "immorality" when the vast majority of Democrats in this country are active members of one organized religion or another?"...check out the statistics on just how many Republicans vs Democrats go to church regularly:  The last time I heard the figures were someting like about 50% to about 10% respectively.  Quite a difference.  And one can certainly remain in the Democratic Party for a long period of time (because I was born into a family of Democrats) before leaving it while beginning to vote for non-Democratic candidates (as I did).

How much longer can Dean last in this role?  He's got to be ticking a lot of people off with this sort of stuff.

I believe it was Eisenhower who refused to hold the elections in Vietnam as specified by the peace treaty in place at that time after the French defeat (he refused because he knew Ho Chi Min would have won and North & South Vietnam would become united under a Communist leader).  I believe it was Kennedy who then sent in the first real American troops to prop-up the South Vietnamese government.  So it's hard to say it was "Johnson's war."  I also don't remember the Republicans screaming out against the Democrats in Congress refusing to fund the war.  They seemed content to go along with it.

the Democratic Party

...Jason eloped with her when he stole the Golden Fleece from her father, the King of Colchis.

She had a mean streak a mile wide...

She killed her own brother when she and Jason eloped with the Fleece.  When Jason divorced her to marry a Corinthian princess, she murdered the bride and the bride's father.  Then her own two children by Jason, and then fled to Athens.

There she married the Athenian King and bore him a son.  Out of jealousy, she tried to murder the King's firstborn, Theseus (of Minotaur fame), and fled to Persia where she later died.

Ms. Benjamin might as well have been named Lizzie Borden Benjamin, or Andrea Yates Benjamin.

--furious

I don't know what you mean by "real American troops" but if you're talking about the first combat units you have to wait until March 1965 (Marines) or May 1965 (Army's 173d Airborne Brigade). So by any meaningful definition it was Johnson's war.

I also don't remember the Republicans screaming out against the Democrats in Congress refusing to fund the war.

I think you miss the point of what he's talking about.

who comes to a conservative board, pretending to be what he assumes will garner more empathy for his opinions, could you please point out some of these protestations.  Enlighten us with a couple of these numerous statements of dissent.  Is it that you don't know what demagoguery means?

Democrats in this country are active members of one organized religion or another.

After reading the Code Pink article I would say no small number are part of radical Islam.

I find it far-fetched that these fanatics don't realize what they are doing is treasonous. I think they know it and revel in it. To them the US is the source of the World's evil. That nothing but evil can be generated by the Goverment and anything they do to oppose the Government, including seditious acts, is OK.

Maddox and Turner Joy.  They became newsworthy in the summer of 1964; also the extremely questionale excuse for sending millions of young Americans to play at war in SE Asia,  a la LBJ.

Nixon?  Well . . . he was left holding the bag. Vietnam was Nixon's war only in the sense that it fell to him to clean it up well enough to get the troops out - after those who began and playfully prosecuted the war for years made it possible only to fight, and not to win. Nixon left Vietnam with a workable peace plan that was sabotaged by Kennedy, Church, et, al.  

America left Vietnam in 1972 - it took until 1975 for the friendless South Vietnamese to run out of bullets and capitulate.  They were left with nothing (thanks to the US Senate) while the North vietnamese suffered from an abundance of Soviet and Chinese military and logistics support. The wonder is that it took so long for Saigon to fall.

You might also save yourself some discomfort by reviewing Eisenhower's decision processes before, during and after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu - a LAOTIAN outpost.  Check their timing, and include in the equation the French request for use of US nuclear weapons to save their colonialst butts.

You will also want to be very, VERY careful in you review of the causes and proponents of the initially failed post-truce Vietnamese elections.

Can't blame Ike for his position in Vietnam at the time.  He was trying to deal with the Peace the Democrats managed to lose in a newly divided Europe after WWII, the gift of a new communist China, and with the more recent 'Bug-Out' in Korea.

they are considering Marxism, Communism and Socialism as 'religions'.

I believe it was Kennedy who then sent in the first real American troops to prop-up the South Vietnamese government.

Even with your errant squirming... still started by a Democrat (not that we really care... most of us all wanted to win Vietnam, support our troops and support the USA regardless of the president in power... how strange of us?).

CODE PINK

Women for Peace

Is this a sexist organization as well? Only women can join?

Looks like woman organized but men can join if they stay hunched and grovelling in the background.

Mission statement... unbelievable items in bold.

CODEPINK is a women-initiated grassroots peace and social justice movement working to end the war in Iraq, stop new wars, and redirect our resources into healthcare, education and other life-affirming activities. CODEPINK rejects the Bush administration's fear-based politics that justify violence, and instead calls for policies based on compassion, kindness and a commitment to international law.  With an emphasis on joy and humor, CODEPINK women and men seek to activate, amplify and inspire a community of peacemakers through creative campaigns and a commitment to non-violence.

thanks and LOL

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that the typical CODEPINK meet-up is about as full of joy and humor as a visit to the dentist's office.

I'll go further and say that their typical meet-up is more mean-spirited than a Scrooge convention.

So regardless of the nuances concerning people/events surrounding the start of the war (be it "No Vote" Eisenhauser, "Send in the Special Advisors" Kennedy &/or "Gulf of Tonkin" Johnson), Nixon was the "better" man for the job & he did the best he could in Vietnam given the bad hand he was dealt.  It was also not the fault of the Nixon/Ford administrations or the minority Republican Congress that friendless South Vietnam "fell" eventually.  Right?

CODEPINK is a women-initiated grassroots peace and social justice movement

When I hear this I want to do as Savage says he does when he hears "For the children," make sure AR-10 is greased and plenty of ammunition is on hand.

and instead calls for policies based on compassion, kindness and a commitment to international law.

What does a hundred years of failure prove anyway?

CODEPINK women and men seek to activate, amplify and inspire a community of peacemakers through creative campaigns and a commitment to non-violence.

Except when they fund pan-Islamic partisans in their holy (ha ha) struggle against the great Satan.

Ever since Roosevelt, the Democratic Party has been the party of socialism. The belief in using government to restribute wealth and force "social justice" is core to the modern Democratic identity.

As a result, the Party has spent the past 60 years wobbling unsteadily between its natural home in the radical left environment (Wallace, McGovern, Kerry/Dean) and the quasi-Republican "moderation" of Kennedy and Clinton.

The Party seems now to be spinning the the left, and may or not spin back to the right in time for the next set of elections. The strain on the party is huge.  Once of these times it will not be able to bounce back.  

President Reagan proved that a "pure" conservative is entirely electable. That puts the Republican Party in a very nice place. McGovern showed that a "pure" socialist/pacifist is not. Stinks to be a liberal Democrat. Especially if they continue to hang with and promote whackoes like Code Pink.

The last time I heard the figures were someting like about 50% to about 10% respectively.

According to a Pew poll, following are the breakdowns of Bush and Kerry voters by church attendance:

Bush voters:

20% more than once per week

31% weekly

14% at least monthly

25% at least yearly

11% never

Kerry voters:

12% more than once per week

23% weekly

14% at least monthly

32% at least yearly

19% never

Of course, the whole notion that church attendance means morality is dependent on the notion of many church attendees that church attendance makes one a moral person.  A better definition of morality might be how one treats and respects others.  Shooter and TXProf speak of the morality of atheists in this thread.

he was a democrat, but during my life time I don't think he ever voted for a democrat for a national or major state office.  He is one of those dems whose party left them, rather than the other way around.

Codepink said they were going to "bird-dog" Hillary.  That's my job!

<We broke with Britian on the basis that it was God that establishes governments on earth and that when those governments so abuse their power as to be in irredeemable conflict with God's Law (as found in the Bible)...which is what they felt King Goeoge did...>

I'm sorry, but that just is completely false. We most assuredly did not break with Britain over the "divine right" of kings to rule their subjects, considering that Britain has not believed in that foolishness since John's knights compelled him to sign Magna Carta. This isn't really a place for a history lesson, so I'll leave it at that.

Nixon was on balance a good President and probably the best that his generation offered. I say this in full view of what Watergate entailed, and also the horrors of Pinochet and various other coups.

Why?

Detente. Nixon was the one who sought to ratchet down the Cold War tension, unlike JFK and LBJ, to some sort of SALT talks (Nixon initiated them) and inject some rationality. In this he was the heir of Eisenhower who also sought to limit Nuclear Brinkmanship.

Nixon created the EPA and was for the time considered to be "moderate" on Civil Rights. Yes he also created Wage and Price Controls, many noxious restrictions on freedom and was a paranoid idiot of the highest order.

But he may just have helped save the world by starting the SALT process and for that he deserves credit. THAT among everything else means he got the biggest thing possible (don't blow up the world) RIGHT.

but South Vietnam did not fall exclusively, or even primarily, to a shortage of bullets.  It is a wonder it took Saigon to fall, but it would have happened regardless of how much money we threw at South Vietnam once we weren't there with them.  Surely you see that, at least, Yahuti.

I'm not a big believer in causation but how can you look at the performance of the ARVN during Easter 1972 and during Lam Son 719 and then say that the fall of SVN was not a direct result of the War Powers Act, which forbade the use of US forces in Vietnam, and the cutoff of all funding for SVN in 1973.

Was a capable military force, or at least had capable units.  The civilian government and the top brass, much less so.  Once our troops and our committment to defend the country were gone, the funding would only prolong the inevitable.  I'm not even arguing that we should have stopped the funding, just that the die was cast with the removal of troops.

if we had continued to use airpower plus providing military aid it is clear that the 1975 offensive, which nearly failed, would have failed. Based on what we know now about how the situation was viewed in North Vietnam I think it's arguable that SVN would have survived.

But back to the point, I don't see how one can not establish a direct line between the War Powers Act, the cutoff of funding, and NVA troops shopping at the PX in Da Nang.

for 1975.  And perhaps war weariness would have brought North Vietnam to seek a truce before SVN collapsed.  Perhaps.  Enough that I rescind the absoluteness of my earlier comment to Yahuti.  I'll fall back on the reasonable folks can disagree DMZ and go on thinking I'm right :-).  

We aren't really that far off from agreement if we're arguing over whether it was the withdrawal or the funding, given that it can all be lumped into the "support" category.  I guess I'm reacting to the flood of spam emails I've received as late regarding the betrayal of the Senate when it didn't authorize the last aid package - my point is that it happened earlier.

Dean is known for this type of headline-making one-liners, but I wonder if all the criticism leveled at him is useful.

Surely, he should be criticized for putting forth a belief as head of his party that many members of his party clearly don't agree with (or at least won't agree with in public).

But to say he's out of touch with the public completely seems wrong.  Doesn't recent polling suggest that the idea of atleast a partial withdrawal is gaining popularity? and that total withdrawal is not a political impossibility any more?

Isn't it likely that the anti-war Dean is testing the waters when the tide of public opinion appears, at least for the moment, to be swinging in his favor?

If that's the case, it'll be interesting to see if the polling trend reverses itself once these comments and their responses have run their course.  If the idea that victory in Iraq is impossible is a totally unpalatable idea to the public, I think those numbers will be affected.

"Medea" Benjamin was born Susie Benjamin, and changed her name as a freshman at Tufts

See this article for more details.

Boy, that must have done lots for her social life in college.

I don't see that at all. There are to many good examples of positive results from staying a long and uncomfortable course.

Any honest history (begin with North Vietnamese testimony) shows that the North had been soundly beaten militarily  and badly wounded politically before the calls for "Immediate" pull-out achieved traction here. According to them, they were preparing to do a deal with us.

In the end, it wasn't about money or bullets.  It was about political moral courage.

Sound familiar?

The South fought well enough alone after our pull-out to have achieved at least their own political settlement; and, I think, would have done until the US Senate slit their throats and left them defenseless.

When you are out of bullets, and the enemy has his bayonet at your throat - how you may or may not have fought on with another magazine - is purely conjectural.