CROAKERS AND HEROES
by David Sisler
Writing for the March 31 edition of The Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan said, “The biggest threat to America now, apart from Iraqi regulars and irregulars, is not a person but a phenomenon. It is the twisting or abusing of facts to underscore a point of view one wishes to see disseminated. I mean propaganda.
“The antiwar left did not pick up its marbles and go home when the war began. They just went home and waited for something bad to happen that they could exploit. They have it now: a war that is taking time and producing deaths on the field.”
Noonan went on to mention Rich Galen, another columnist who was commenting about the strange way many in the media are reporting on the war to liberate Iraq.
Galen came across a cable news broadcast which said only about 34 percent of Americans think the war is going well. Galen was shocked by that, so he looked up the latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll. It did indeed say that 34 percent of us think the war is going “very well.” The poll also said that 51 percent of us believe that the war is going “moderately well.” Now my math skills aren’t what they used to be, but that seems to me that a full 85 percent of us have a favorable attitude towards the conduct of the war.
Eighty-five percent is certainly a higher figure of approval that the 34 percent that the cable news folks wanted us to hear!
The truth is 85 percent – and it was not reported. The propaganda lie is 34 percent – and it seems that from here on, that’s the way the story will be told.
John L. Perry tells the story of a good, ol’ boy who lived out near a pond. He heard what he thought were so many frogs croaking that he answered an ad to furnish frog skins to be made into watch bands. He contracted to send off a thousand skins a week.
The first week he sent in a dozen skins. The second week, four. The third week, one.
When he received an e-mail from the watch-band manufacturer asking for the rest of the frog skins, he messaged back: “I guess I overestimated the croaking.”
In an open letter to President George W. Bush, Perry said, “Pay the croakers no heed, Mr. President. And remember what Winston Churchill said about opinion polls, when the very existence of the British democracy hung in the balance: “Nothing is more dangerous in wartime than to live in the temperamental atmosphere of a Gallup poll, always feeling one’s pulse and taking one’s temperature.”
I am very glad that President Bush is not listening to the opinions from the croakers of Hollywood who are attacking the leadership of the United States of America, calling our president and his advisors, “stupid,” “idiots,” and “morons.”
These stars of stage, screen and television have pedagogical credentials ranging from Cher (a ninth grade education) to Barbara Streisand and Sean Penn (high school graduates) to Martin Sheen (failed his college entrance exam – and is not the president, he merely plays one on TV) to Michael Moore (dropped out of college after his freshman year). Their “inside sources” (the rantings of the liberal media) give them – in their own shallow minds – the audacity to label as morons men and women with decades of service (in public venues and in the military), and who have scores of earned degrees – from undergraduate through PhD.
Not content with those attacks some of them now say they are ashamed to be Americans.
In Spain, before the war in Iraq began, Jessica Lange, an actress who dropped out of college in the middle of her freshman year, said she is embarrassed to be an American.
The Hollywooders are not alone.
In Moscow, Tanya Abrams, a student on a U.S. taxpayer-funded fellowship to the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, was quoted last week by The Moscow Times as saying, “I’m embarrassed to be an American.”
I wish I could introduce Lange and Abrams to Jose Gutierrez and Jose Angel Garibay. Those two young men, Gutierrez, a 22-year-old lance corporal in the U.S. Marine Corps, and Garibay, a 21-year-old Marine corporal, volunteered to be part of the American armed forces (their stories were reported on April 5 by The Wall Street Journal).
I said that I wish I could introduce those two young Marines to those two embarrassed citizens. That is impossible because those two Marines were among the first members of America’s military to die in the war to liberate Iraq. Neither of them were American citizens, but both of them were proud to be fighting on behalf of this nation.
Corporal Gutierrez said, “From what I’ve seen, Saddam has to be confronted. It’s my job. It’s also my duty.”
Shortly before his death, Corporal Garibay wrote a letter to a former high school teacher explaining why he was willing to go to war: “I want to defend the country I plan to become a citizen of.”
Both Marines have been awarded citizenship posthumously.
Jessica Lange and Tanya Abrams, you said you were embarrassed to be Americans. Well, I guess that makes it unanimous. We are embarrassed by you and your croaking!
Especially in the presence of Jose Gutierrez and Jose Angel Garibay.
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Copyright 2003 by David Sisler. All Rights Reserved.
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