Khmer Rouge

Can The US Win Success In War On Terror By Utilizing Tactics Of Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, Communist North Korea, And ISIL?

Ronald 1 Comment

It is clear that America lives in a different era since the September 11, 2001 attacks, and that our national security structure must do everything within legitimate limits to protect our nation!

There is no real argument with that fact, but the question arises whether this nation can win success in the War on Terror by utilizing tactics of Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, Communist North Korea, ISIL, and other despotic regimes throughout history.

If our government lacks any ethics, morals, and sense of decency in its actions against our enemies, it means our soldiers and civilians will be treated in the same despotic manner, whenever any of them are unfortunate enough to fall into the hands of the enemy.

But even if the enemy employs these despicable tactics is NO justification for us to do the same, as we are a democracy that believes in human dignity, human freedom, human rights, and the rule of law!

Torture is inhumane, and does not gain actionable intelligence by any measure we know of, but even if we think it does, it is against all common sense, as to become a “monster” in order to fight a “monster” is to lose our purpose as a nation which sets a standard of civilized behavior for the world.

Some will say that dropping the atomic bomb in World War II; firebombing Dresden and Tokyo in World War II; using drones in the War on Terror; and other similar tactics is the same situation, no better than CIA torture of detainees in prison.

But in actual fact, while the examples given are reprehensible, they are part of the laws of war, while brutal torture tactics are not so, as detainees are supposed to be treated with respect, which, of course, is why what happened with the Nazis in the Holocaust of World War II; the Cambodian Holocaust of the late 1970s by the Khmer Rouge; and other mass murders by ISIL and other groups is a totally different category of what must be called war crimes!

And sadly, what the CIA has done, and what George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have authorized and defended, IS a war crime, plain and simple!

A Great Moment In American History 39 Years Ago Today As The Rule Of Law Triumphed, And Sanity Returned With Gerald Ford Becoming President!

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39 years ago today, President Richard Nixon resigned from office, as the rule of law triumphed, and America returned to sanity with the the inauguration of Gerald Ford as our 38th President.

Nixon might have accomplished a great deal in his five and a half years in the White House, but he represented the greatest threat to our government stability since the Civil War, as he abused power, showed definite signs of mental illness, and had proved on the Watergate tapes that he had obstructed justice and broken the law, and had expressed what we did not know clearly at the time, overt racism and anti semitism!

The Constitution worked, as the Congress and the Supreme Court intervened and saved America from a President out of control, and we were blessed with a man who replaced him, who we now realize was the right person to take the helm at a time when we desperately needed a person of conscience, decency, and principles.

We found that man in Gerald Ford, who never had ambitions to be President, but came along as an acceptable choice under the 25th Amendment, which had only been added to the Constitution six years earlier, in 1967. We were saved from a fate worse than Nixon, the crooked, unqualified, and demagogic Spiro Agnew, who scared the living daylights out of many decent, principled Americans.

Ford came into the Presidency, moved us past the nightmare of Richard Nixon by pardoning him, so that the nation could look to the future, and deal with the many problems it faced at that time in the mid 1970s…He suffered defeat for a full term in 1976 by a small margin, certainly caused by that controversial pardon. But he steadied the ship of state, and gained respect for his handling of a terrorist incident, the Mayaguez Affair with the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia; gave us one of the greatest recent Supreme Court Justices, John Paul Stevens, who served 35 years, longer than any Justice except William O. Douglas; graced us with his wonderful wife, Betty Ford, who set a modern standard for First Ladies to follow, as the most active since Eleanor Roosevelt; and held off the right wing tilt of the Republican Party for four years, by stopping Ronald Reagan’s attempt to turn the party to the Right. He also gave us one of our best and most activist Vice Presidents, Nelson Rockefeller, and bravely survived two assassination attempts within 17 days of each other in September 1975. Ford also showed us how a Republican President could be a responsible, mainstream conservative.

Gerald Ford restored the dignity and status of the Presidency at a time when it desperately needed a boost, and graced our nation for a longer life than any President of the United States.

Having visited the Gerald Ford Museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan, last month brought this author and blogger to a greater understanding and appreciation of the contributions of Gerald and Betty Ford. While he served the shortest term of a President who did not die in office, it was a significant 895 days, and we owe him a debt of gratitude for his service in the Presidency, as well as his 25 years in the House of Representatives.

Another Moral Lapse: Syria Added To Cambodia And Rwanda

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Any decent human being, witnessing the horrors of a Holocaust in Syria, as the world sits by and takes no action to stop the massacre of the citizenry by the government of Bashar Al Assad, feels helpless.

This massacre has been going on for almost a year now, and yet no nation or group of nations is doing anything other than to express horror at what is going on. In America, there is a feeling that we cannot intervene, as Barack Obama did in Libya, because of lack of international support and the exhaustion felt in this country about our interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Iranian influence in Syria, which also prevents intervention, as Russia and China side with both nations, is in itself an alarm bell, that could be looked upon in the future as a tremendous mistake that causes a worse overall situation in the Middle East, and endangers Israeli national security.

No one is saying that it is an easy decision to think of American intervention in Syria, but the feeling of helplessness is disturbing.

We must not forget that the world stood by as the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia slaughtered 2.5 million between 1975 and 1978, during the administrations of Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.

And we must not forget that the world stood by as we had the mass murder of about two thirds of a million in Rwanda in 1994 during the administration of Bill Clinton.

Will we be able to keep our heads from being in shame when we look back at this time in the future?

Does Osama Bin Laden Success Guarantee Second Presidential Term For Barack Obama?

Ronald 1 Comment

As a result of the successful raid into the Osama Bin Laden compound in Pakistan, the first thought would be that it gives President Obama a tremendous edge in the contest for re-election as President in 2012.

But before we conclude that, we need to look at history, whether military success insures a political victory.

In at least three cases, two American and one British, exactly the opposite occurred.

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was the great hero of World War II and the struggle against Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. And yet, when the British people voted months after the end of the European war, they chose to vote out the Conservative Party of Churchill and put in as Prime Minister the Labour Party leader, Clement Attlee, who served from 1945-1951.

In 1975, President Gerald Ford mounted a successful rescue mission of 39 US Navy personnel from the ship Mayaguez, which had been seized by the radical Khmer Rouge government of Cambodia. While 41 military personnel died in the successful rescue mission, two more than the number saved, it was still seen as a victory to be able to release the hostages unharmed. But in 1976, President Ford lost to Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia for a full term in the White House!

And in 1991, President George H W Bush was able to mount a UN offensive which defeated Saddam Hussein in six weeks, the very brief Gulf War! Bush’s ratings hit an all time high for any President, 91 percent, but a year and a half later, only 37 percent voted for Bush against Bill Clinton, the second worst defeated President in American history, despite the great and quick victory over Iraq!

So while it would seem likely that Obama gains a great edge for next year’s election by the death of Osama Bin Laden, there is no certainty in any sense of what the future holds!