In that piece I cited a Spencer Ackerman essay, where he declared of President George W. Bush, "May his war-crimes prosecutor be Iraqi; may his judge be American; and may he die in the Hague."
I generally don't like radical leftists, especially in foreign policy, as they enable America's enemies. But I'm certain that Ackerman's got a special place reserved in Hell - the way he condemns, defames, and demonizes those of upright moral standing and resolve - so things do even out in the end.
I mention all of this with reference to Ackerman's essay today, "Neocons vs. Bob Gates, With Special Guest Appearance by KKK Founder." The piece is a slanderous attack on Thomas Donnelly and Gary Schmitt, and their essay at today's Wall Street Journal, "Obama and Gates Gut the Military." The authors argue that the Obama administration's new Pentagon budget, announced this week by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, will result in "a future U.S. military that is smaller and packs less wallop." Read the whole thing for the specifics (I'd hate to see the F-22 Raptor get the ax after all). At the introduction, the authors quote Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate Cavalry commander and innovative thinker of military doctrine. Forrest was also a founder of the Ku Klux Klan, and this fact provides Ackerman's opening against Donnelly and Schmitt:
Tom Donnelly and Gary Schmitt of the American Enterprise Institute, members in good standing of the neoconservative cabal to eat your babies and conquer the world and then eat more babies, have an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal arguing against Defense Secretary Bob Gates’ program cuts. While they don’t really like the budget, they do seem to like the founder of the Ku Klux Klan ....Ackerman, at one point, takes issue with Donnelly and Schmitt's argument in favor of the F-22, claiming that the F-35 Lightning II (Joint Strike Fighter) is a ready "alternative." Of course, as I cited the other nght, the incomparable F-22 Raptor is the most advanced fighter aircraft ever built, and as my friend Tom the Redhunter notes, the F-35 Lightning "was never intended to be our primary front line fighter"
American dominance is not so fragile that trading planes is going to eliminate it. But I guess taking advice from Klan leaders leads to all sorts of paranoia.
Spencer Ackerman, who bills himself as a national security "expert," should know this. But the comparative efficacy of military readiness, force postures, and ordnance requirements are irrelevant to Ackerman's program. His demonic goal is to excoriate and ridicule the "evil" neocons, but in the process Ackerman simply demonstrates once again how childish he is. He's might as well quit journalism to focus on his punk band. No doubt some of the Nazi skinheads at his gigs would be better able to appreciate the significance of historical figures such as Nathan Bedford Forrest.
See also, The Redhunter, "Obama's B-1A?"
Image Credit: All Things Beautiful, "The Power of Demonization."
11 comments:
Donald --
I used to dismiss left-wing kooks like Ackerman as fringe players who spew their venom as a way of making themselves feel better about their obviously dreary lives. Alas, with Obama in the White House and George Soros, Michael Moore, the Daily Kos and their ilk having a direct line to the West Wing, I don't think I can be so cavalier. The inmates are now running the asylum.
The sad truth is that Ackerman speaks for a significant portion of the left-wing of the Democrat Party -- those who are urging John Conyers and others to bring charges against the Bush Administration and who believe that 9/11 was America's just desserts for a history of imperialist aggression. As I wrote recently in a post entitled "Sorry for Saving the World" (www.kennethgdavenport.com/2009/04/sorry-for-saving-world.html), the left seems certain that apologizing to the world should be the first step in retrenching U.S. power so that the U.N. and other multilateral organizations can be in charge of American security.
Donald, Great post as usual. I read an E-mail article written in rollingstone about tis bailout mess and it made more sense than I have read lately. It location is http://rollingstone.com/politics/story26793903/the big takedown you might enjoy the read, I did....
More evidence that, to borrow a phrase from the movie Armageddon, that Leftists shouldn't be trusted with a potato gun ... much less the control of our armed forces.
While I'm all for preventing wasteful spending ... such as the military spending that we often see, that was NOT asked for by the Pentagon, but was allocated anyway by our Congrescritters in the name of defense; defense, that is, of their own seats by bringing home the pork ...
... the reason we continue to upgrade our military capabilities, even when we are already ahead of our adversaries, is that staying ahead PREVENTS the fight from ever happening.
Witness how the USAF has been free to support our ground forces, instead of engaged in its own fights to get/keep control of the skies, because the state of USAF technology and techniques was far beyond our enemies ... so far, in fact, that in Desert Storm and OIF, the enemy -- knowing this -- nearly always made the choice not to engage the USAF.
Now, the enemies of this nation will see an opportunity to catch up ... and as always, are already working to do so.
The closer they come to parity with us, the more expensive it will become to regain the advantage -- and prevent conflicts from starting.
Pay now ... or pay a lot more, in both blood and treasure, later.
As for Ackerman, his apparent tone-deafness to the shortcomings of the F-35 (shortcomings in large part due to repeating the McNamera folly of trying to make a one-size-fits-all airframe in the name of cost-control), to the point he can propose it as a viable alternative to the tested-and-deployed (and yes, expensive) F-22, speaks volumes.
Yeah, it's really annoying how globalists smear real conservatives with that broad brush of "racism," isn't it?
http://americanpowerblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/jim-webb-and-neo-confederate-ideology.html
Well if the military would stop blowing up all the pigs, we wouldn't have to eat the babies.
Just a little historical perspective for the hysterical left...
The KKK that Nathan Bedlam Forrest created was not, at the time, a racist organization. It was a vigilante organization to bring order and some semblance of law back to the South after the Civil War. It wasn't until control of the Klan was wrested from him that it became racist.
I had the pleasure of meeting Nathan Bedlam Forrest's great grandson, by the same name. Nathan Forrest (the elder) was a man of honor that tried to do the right thing for the south.
Much as our government has morphed into a monster that the founders never intended or wanted, so too has the KKK become a beast that Nathan Bedlam Forrest would have destroyed on sight.
Greywolfe,
Couldn't have said it better myself.
I will receive much pleasure pounding these libtards into the dirt, when the time comes and that time is soon upon us.
And, yes, I am completely intolerant of those that would promote legislating around the United States Constitution in order to make the Founding Document merely a formality and a bad memory of the past and bring in a failed program of socialistic nonsense.
Forrest was one of the greatest fighting men in American history, and I certainly would rather look to him as an authority on military matters than Bob Gates and the liberals. A lot of the democratic peace theory obsessed neocons, too, could learn from him that "War means fighting, and fighting means killing."
Man, I tell ya'...there's no shortage of a$$holes is there, Donald?
Thank you for the link, Donald.
Rich Caseblot at 4:34 AM has it exactly right.
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