Monday, November 30, 2009

A Distinct Lack of Respect.



Those who have never served in our Armed Forces may find what I have to say today rather trivial.  That’s because you have never laid down your life for your buddies and something bigger than all of you.  When a Soldier, Sailor, Marine, of Airman makes the ultimate sacrifice those who have served understand that a debt of honor is owed to that person that can never be repaid.  All we can do is render all of the respect and honor that we possibly can at every opportunity we can find.  There is a movie that I’d like to recommend to everyone.  The name of the flick is “Taking Chance.”  It is about a young Marine killed in Iraq and is being escorted home by a Marine officer.  The young Marine’s name is Chance and the screen play was taken directly from the diary of the Marine officer. If you watch the movie and have any questions about anything in it, feel free to ask me.  It would be an honor and pleasure to help you.

Having said all of that, I can now get to the point of today’s post.  I’m sure that no one is unaware of the fact that a short time ago 13 U.S. Army Soldiers were gunned down aboard their own base at a time when they had no means to defend themselves.  Forty two soldiers were also wounded in the attack.  Whether the shooter had any ties to any known terrorist group, it was an attack by a terrorist in our ongoing war against terror. A few days after the attack there was a memorial service for those killed.  The president attended the memorial service.  I know that this president knows how to render a hand salute, I’ve seen him return the salute of his Marine honor guards.  When The National Anthem was played to honor these brave soldiers full honors should have been shown.  It was by everyone on that podium except for the alleged Commander-in-chief.  He could have simply placed his hand over his heart or rendered a hand salute, but apparently this president does not have enough respect for our National Anthem or for fallen soldiers to render any kind of salute.  I am disgusted by this photo.  I think you will be too.  Remember, this picture was taken as the National Anthem was being played at the memorial service for the soldiers killed at Fort Hood.









Saturday, November 28, 2009

The Protracted War


The great master, Sun Tzu, lived in the fifth century Before Christ.  (That’s right, I said Before Christ, not “before common era.”  If my use of the word Christ offends you, then go read someone else’s blog.)  He was, and still is, considered the greatest expert on warfare.  His book, The Art of War, was revered for many centuries.  It was then ignored for several centuries, it has now experienced a great resurgence of study and reverence.  I too have read his book.  As a combat veteran, I see the wisdom in Sun Tzu’s work.  What Master Sun knew 7000 years ago is still true today.  I have seen several documentary films that show where twentieth century generals have followed Sun Tzu’s teaching and succeeded and others that went against Sun Tzu’s writing and lost.  Even though the tools and methods of war have changed a great deal since Master Sun’s time, the philosophy and psychology of war has not.

In one of the many scrolls that make up the chapters of his book, Sun Tzu says, “There is no instance where a country benefits from a protracted war.”  We can look back on wars fought in the twentieth century and see where this one statement is true. World War I became a war of stalemate.  Trench warfare was stalled for a long time and over one million troops were killed.  Both the French and German governments were almost bankrupted when the American Army entered the fray and, by changing the tactics, brought the war to a fairly quick end.

The most successful type of warfare of the twentieth century was the German “Blitzkrieg,” or “Lightening War.”  The German shock troops moved it quickly, struck brutally and won quickly.  Even against the huge French Army caved in very quickly to Hitler’s troops.  Then when General Patton arrived on the scene, he moved just as quickly to put an end to Hitler and his madness.

Then came the longest and most costly war this nation has ever endured, The Cold War.  Yes, the Cold War never became a shooting war, but the United States government and Soviet Russia spend untold billions of dollars in the arms race.  The Cold War’s arms race kept both countries at bay because we knew that winning a shooting war would be almost impossible for either side.  Without a shot being fired, this Cold War almost bankrupted the Soviet Union.  Almost, but not quite.  The fall of the Soviet Union was caused mainly by Soviet aggression in Afghanistan. There, they fought a long, drawn-out fight that gained nothing for Russia except a debt that it could not sustain and finally, the Communist government collapsed.

A few years earlier the United States was in a very similar quandary.  A protracted struggle in Southeast Asia  gained nothing for America.  Luckily we got out of there before the war broke us completely.  Unfortunately we learned nothing either.  The war on terror has caused us to have troops in harms way for over eight years now.  Again, we have gained nothing for the high price we have paid and continue to pay, both in precious American lives and the financial crisis that it has caused.

So, once again, I call for the president to either step up, take the advice of his generals and win this thing once and for all or pull out now.  Yes, I know what will happen if we abandon the fight in Afghanistan and Iraq, there will be a bloodbath.  Millions of innocent people, including children, will suffer and die.  That is why I would prefer for the president to choose a swift victory.  There will be a great loss of life, but it will be over soon and we can all settle down to a peaceful life.

Our economy is in great peril, we don’t need the expense of a long war adding to it.  God bless our troops and let us all be thankful to the enormous debt that we owe to them.  But, Mr. President, either let them fight to win, or bring them home.

John A. Wilson
President
Conservative Action Project.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Are We Stupid?


Just how stupid do politicians think the American People are?  Do you think that they honestly believe that they will get away with the political shenanigans that have been going on?  I think they are about to get a rude awakening.  There have been all kinds of shady deals made, lots of pressure applied and a few outright threats made.  Harry Reid needed all 60 Senate Democrats votes to move the Healthcare Bill to debate on the Senate floor.  The vote to move the bill forward is, in effect, a guarantee that the bill will pass the Senate.  Oh, I know, a couple of sellout Senators are claiming that their votes do not mean the bill will pass.  They say that they just want to bill to be debated.  But there is something else that they are not telling us.  While Prince Harry had to have all 60 Democrat votes to move the bill forward, he will not need all 60 of them to pass the bill.  That’s right, the 60-vote supermajority needed for cloture is not necessary for the bill to pass.  That takes only a simple majority, 51 votes.  So Harry Reid can give up to 9 Senators a free pass to vote against the bill and still get it passed.  Why, you may ask, is this important?

Elementary my dear reader, Blanche Lincoln can vote against the bill on the Senate floor and it will still pass.  You can bet that Senator Lincoln will be trumpeting the fact that she voted against this bill next year in her bid for re-election.  She can make all sorts of claims about how she listened to her constituents and did what she did for the people of Arkansas.  And like Democrats all over the country, she’ll be lying through her teeth.  Senator Lincoln is Chairman of U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry.  There were rumors that her chairmanship of that committee was in danger if she didn’t vote for cloture.  Some more liberal Democrats here in Arkansas have also threatened to run a well-financed campaign to elect a liberal Democrat in the May primary election.  Senator Lincoln describes herself as a centrist Democrat.

Recent polls indicate that over 60% of Arkansans are against this health care bill.  Senator Lincoln has said that she is against some of the provisions in the bill.  One would think that those two facts would be enough to dissuade the Senator from voting for this bill to go forward.  Senator Lincoln had in her hand the power to stop this awful bill once and for all.  But Senator Lincoln chose her political career over the people of Arkansas.  Even if she does vote against the healthcare bill, it will now pass by a narrow margin.  She can shout from the rooftops that she was opposed to this bill and voted against it all she wants to, we are going to remember what she did to us the voters of Arkansas and the whole country.  Count on it, I’m not going to forget and I’ll keep reminding all of you.  The campaign starts now.  Do not re-elect Lincoln.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

The Constitution vs The Healthcare Bill

The Constitution of the United States of America was hand-written on four pages.  The document that has endured a Civil War, two World Wars, the Great Depression and the Carter administration can be printed out in Word on six pages.  A six-page document has been sufficient to run this country for over two hundred years.  The document that is supposed to “fix” health care in America is over two thousand pages.  What is wrong with this picture?  The Senate Bill still has yet to be released, but it is even longer than the House Bill so I can only assume that it will be even more complicated, confusing and ambiguous than H.R. 3200.  I’ve gone over the U.S. Constitution again and again, and I simply cannot find anything in it that says the Federal Government has the authority to take control over our health care.  Bear in mind, anything that is not specifically given to the government by the constitution is prohibited to it by the Tenth Amendment.  I am not an expert on the U.S. Constitution, but it is not a very difficult document to understand.  The Constitution is not written in convoluted lawyerese that not even the lawyers that wrote it know all that is covered by it.  The case can be made that the length and complicated wording are designed to make it impossible for the lay people to understand.  Prince Harry and Princess Pelosi think that we, the people, are too stupid to figure that out.  Some folks are in for a rude awakening a year of so from now.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

First in a Series


I am going to write a series of blogs about the Constitution as I understand it.  I have a couple of copies in booklet form and have read the entire Constitution several times.  I do not claim to be some kind of expert on the Constitution.  I’m not even sure if the way I understand the document is the way the founding fathers meant it to mean.  This series of articles is merely my take on what the Constitution says and what it means to this country that I love.

On May 25, 1787, 39 delegates from 12 states signed the document that created the government that led to this land becoming the greatest nation in the world.  I did not say that the United States is perfect, but if you really compare this country to any other place in the world, this country is clearly the best.  The foundation of this great country is the Constitution.  It is the rock upon which this country was built.  The Constitution is the guardian of our freedom.  This wonderful document not only described what the government of this country is expected to do, but also states in no uncertain terms the things that the government is not allowed to do.   The Constitution has been under attack for several years now.  I think we have gotten to the point where most Americans are beginning to think that it is time we moved back to what the Constitution says, not what power-hungry politicians claim it says.

I have heard The Anointed One, Our Beloved Leader, Barrak Hussein Obama (peace be upon him) say that The Bill of Rights is a list of “negative rights.”  The Bill of Rights lays out what the government can not do to us.  A lot of those on the left find this unacceptable.   The Anointed One, Our Beloved Leader, Barrak Hussein Obama (peace be upon him) has said that the Bill of Rights should also include the things that the government is required to do for each of the citizens in this great country.  There are two things wrong with that attitude.  One of them I will address right now, the other I will do my best to cover over the next week.

The very concept of The Constitution of the United States of America listing what the government must do flies in the face of what the Founding Fathers intended to do.  This country was founded on the principle that “the government that governs least governs best.”  The purpose of The Bill of Rights is to limit the size and scope of government.  What the framers of our Constitution were working to achieve was an energetic, but limited government.  The colonists had seen what a big, all-powerful government can do.  They had suffered long enough under the tyranny of absolute government.  Think about it for a minute, how bad do things have to be before you make the decision to take up arms against your government.  Once that decision is made, it can not be taken back.  As the great Benjamin Franklin said after the Declaration of Independence was signed, “We must hang together or we shall all hang separately.”  Those who took up arms and threw off the tyranny of the strongest monarch in the world at that time must have had a great many reasons to limit the size and power of the central government when it came time to set down on paper the type of government that we will be happiest under.

So yes, the Bill of Rights does not include the things that the government is responsible for in our everyday lives, because that is exactly what our Founding Fathers intended.  The government has no responsibility to take care of the citizens in a Republican form of government.  And I don’t care what the lefty loons say our country was founded as a Republic, not a “representative democracy.”  That term did not exist back then and was coined by the Democrat Party because they hate anything that has that word in it.  The definition of several types of governance will be covered in later blogs.

I hope that explains one of the reasons that The Anointed One, Our Beloved Leader, Barrak Hussein Obama (peace be upon him) was wrong about the responsibilities of government.  My next blog will attempt to prove that He is wrong about the Constitution not laying out what the government must do.  There is a section of the Constitution called the Enumerated Powers.  More on them soon.

Sunday, November 8, 2009

The Definition of Oppresive Governments


Thirty-seven years, four months and thirteen days ago I stood in an office of the Armed Forces Examination and Entrance Station in Shreveport, Louisiana and raised my right hand.  There I swore to protect and defend the United States of America from all enemies both foreign and domestic.  I pledged my life in the defense of the country I loved.  I stated that I would defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies of freedom.  I spent most of the next year training and then took up my weapon and marched off to war.  I killed other human beings to prevent Communism from swallowing up a little country in Southeast Asia.  Then I watched as politicians gave that freedom-loving country away to the Communists and could only bow my head in shame as hundreds of thousands of the people I tried to protect were executed.  I was saddened but not defeated.  I was able to console myself with the thought that at least I had tried.  I did all that I could, but it fell short of being enough.

I have continued my fight to keep Socialism, Communism and Fascism at bay.  For the last several years I have watched all three of them creep into the fabric of my America.  I have tried to fight it, but really didn’t know how until this year.  In early March of this year I found a way to reach out and fight.  I joined an organization called Conservative Action Project.  Since that time I have been able to fight for the Constitution, to defend it against those who wish to undermine it.  But like my fight in Vietnam, this fight has not been enough.  I watched Saturday as Congress voted to pass a bill that eventually gives the federal government control of the health care industry in this country.  The government has already taken control of much of the automobile industry, the banking industry and the insurance industry.  I have been laughed off for mentioning that these takeovers were Socialist or Fascist.  But when we look into the definitions of these oppressive forms of government we can see where they do apply.

To determine whether or not the argument that this government is moving toward Socialism, Communism or Fascism we must first define what those terms mean.  Socialism is a term most of us have heard and have some idea what it means.  Socialism is a system of governance in which the government owns and operates business or industry.  Everyone works for the government and is paid according to what that person’s individual needs are.  Karl Marx, the founder of Socialism gave us this famous quote:
From each according to his ability
To each according to his need.
This is a totally Utopian idea.  For true Socialism to succeed every person must be totally selfless.  None can be hungry for power.  No one may have more than his neighbor has.  It works well with bees and ants, but simply can not and will not work for people.  That is where Communism comes in.  In a Communist state, the government runs everything.  Every decision in your life has to be made from the perspective of what the government expects of you.  The government runs all business but you can advance and make more money that your neighbors.  The catch is, you can only advance within the ruling party, not your ability to do your job.  That brings us to Fascism.  The definition of Fascism is, the citizens own businesses, but the government tells you how to run them.  That is essentially what the government is doing to the banking industry now.  The government has issued regulations as to how much the bank will be allowed to pay its employees among other things.  Banks that have accepted TARP money must abide by these regulations.  Banks that have not accepted TARP funds do not necessarily have to abide by these regulations, but they will be audited by the FDIC if they don’t.

Here in my beloved country, the government owns a huge amount of General Motors, the union owns most of the rest.  No matter how you spin it, or twist it, that is Socialism.  The government tells banks how to go about doing business, that is Fascism.  Now the government is looking to take control of our healthcare.

So there are the facts as I see them.  As I look forward to this Wednesday when our nation will take a moment to thank our Veterans, I can’t help but wonder how sincere the thanks we are receiving are.  What I and countless numbers of my brothers-in-arms have fought for, this congress and administration are methodically destroying.  But I will continue to fight.  For my God and my country, for our liberty, I will carry on this fight.   God bless America.


John A. Wilson
President
Conservative Action Project



Friday, November 6, 2009

Tragic Shooting in Fort Hood


Today we are deeply saddened by the events of yesterday at Fort Hood, Texas. Twelve brave soldiers were gunned down in a place where they should have had the right to believe they were safe, or at least as safe as anyone can be in this mixed-up world these days.  One of their own, a Major no less, walked into a crowded building and opened fire on his brothers-in-arms.  This homespun terrorist coward, after taking the lives of 12 unarmed soldiers and wounding 31, stopped four rounds himself.  Apparently, the first one was from a female civilian police officer.  Since the shooter was a Muslim, being shot by a woman would be only marginally less horrible than being trampled by a herd of pigs.  Fortunately, the coward didn’t die.  Through the miracles of modern medicine he may, one day, be brought to trial to answer for his cowardly acts.

Since he was a member of the United States Armed Forces and in uniform at the time, he must be tried under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).  The UCMJ carries some pretty stiff penalties for several different behaviors.  Since he turned his weapon on other members of the Armed Forces he may be tried for Treason. He will obviously be tried for Murder. Here is what the UCMJ says about murder:

918. ART. 118. MURDER 
Any person subject to this chapter whom without justification or excuse, unlawfully kills a human being, when he- - 
(1) has a premeditated design to kill; 
(2) intends to kill or inflict great bodily harm; 
(3) is engaged in an act which is inherently dangerous to others and evinces a wanton disregard of human life; or (4) is engaged in the perpetration or attempted perpetration of burglary, sodomy, rape, robbery, or aggravated arson; is guilty of murder, and shall suffer such punishment as a court-martial may direct, except that if found guilty under clause (1) or (4), he shall suffer death or imprisonment for life as a court-martial may direct. 


Since he walked into that room with two handguns and extra ammo, I’d say clause one just might be applicable. But, I’m not a lawyer, this is just my opinion.

I realize that the authorities are not calling this an act of terror. I beg to differ.  (Wow, imagine me not agreeing with the government. Who’da thunk it?)  As a soldier, this Muslim creep was a trained marksman.  He apparently knows his way around a handgun since, with two handguns, he was able to fire at least 43 rounds.  He MUST have had several extra magazines.  A trained shooter, with extra ammo walking into a room full of unarmed people is, without question, a weapon of mass destruction. He was about to be deployed to either Afghanistan or Iraq. Soon we may know what he was thinking about.  I hope so.

John A. Wilson
President
Conservative Action Project