Rudyard Kipling"
āWhen you're left wounded on Afganistan's plains and
the women come out to cut up what remains, Just roll to your rifle
and blow out your brains,
And go to your God like a soldierā
General Douglas MacArthur"
āWe are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.ā
āIt is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.ā āOld soldiers never die; they just fade away.
āThe soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.ā
āMay God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .ā āThe object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
āNobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
āIt is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
The Soldier stood and faced God
Which must always come to pass
He hoped his shoes were shining
Just as bright as his brass
"Step forward you Soldier,
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My Church have you been true?"
"No, Lord, I guess I ain't
Because those of us who carry guns
Can't always be a saint."
I've had to work on Sundays
And at times my talk was tough,
And sometimes I've been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.
But, I never took a penny
That wasn't mine to keep.
Though I worked a lot of overtime
When the bills got just too steep,
The Soldier squared his shoulders and said
And I never passed a cry for help
Though at times I shook with fear,
And sometimes, God forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.
I know I don't deserve a place
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around
Except to calm their fears.
If you've a place for me here,
Lord, It needn't be so grand,
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't, I'll understand."
There was silence all around the throne
Where the saints had often trod
As the Soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.
"Step forward now, you Soldier,
You've borne your burden well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in Hell."
Why Obama Lost The First Debate - And Might Lose The Next Ones
Monday, October 08, 2012
Even Presidentās Obamaās most die-hard, left-wing groupies and
sycophants ā like Stephanie Cutter, Chris Matthews, Bill Maher, Lawrence
OāDonnell, John Stewart, and E.J. Dionne ā conceded this week that he
was trounced by Mr. Romney in the first presidential debate. Still, many
of Obamaās lapdogs insisted that he lost only because Mr. Romney ālied
his ass off,ā which itself is a brazen lie that these liars hope no one
notices, since few people, least of all Mr. Obama and his acolytes, care
much about fact-checking. Perhaps the best hypothesis about Obamaās
dud, one that might convince the most earnest global-warming zealot,
came from meteorologist Al Gore, who insisted Obama was fatigued because
he didnāt adjust to Coloradoās high altitude.
Upon hearing the green
weathermanās unique take, pundits could be heard chanting āexactly!ā Now, back to reality ā expunge the Gore from your mind. Whatās the
real reason Mr. Obama lost and Mr. Romney won? My darling wife Lisa and I
both watched the event. In my view it was one of the best U.S.
presidential debates ever, and one of the best performances by a GOP
candidate, surpassing even Reaganās famed efforts. Lisa and I had
slightly different interpretations of the result, but since sheās far
more astute than I about contemporary politics, her take on it is worth
sharing publicly (with her kind permission).
My own view, first, is that Mr. Romney won because he actually knows
what heās talking about, because he has a superior vision and program
for America, because heās bright, articulate, experienced, and
energetic, a proven leader, and a decent, honest man who appreciates
Americaās founding principles (individualistic, free-market), and as
president, would at least try to re-apply some of them. Iāve explained
my views on the Romney-Ryan ticket at greater length in another essay at Forbes.
But Mr. Obama, in contrast, is nearly the reverse of Mr. Romney, in all
these key ways. The opposite of Romneyās many achievements and virtues
can be found, I think, in Obamaās many missteps and vices. For me, this
is mostly about substance, not style.
My wife isnāt unaware of the substantive differences between these
candidates, but sheās astute also about some of the other key aspects of
presidential debating ā and I think she has a unique take on what went
down between Romney and Obama last week ā one that escaped me. In
effect, she said this: Mr. Obama has emotional, left-leaning
convictions, and for most of his upbringing he was steeped in leftism,
but mostly heās hollow at his core; he relies on others to craft his
speeches and remarks, which he can deliver only by teleprompter. In
public he tends to address only adoring, supportive crowds (or
reporters), and then counts on whipping them up with populist,
rich-bashing rhetoric and hate speech; whenever his more incendiary and
offensive material surfaces before a broader audience, he is bailed out,
papered over, or excused by media sympathizers.
The key to his debate
loss, she concluded, is that he suddenly had none of the things
which he had come to rely on so heavily ā no remarks written out for
him by others in advance, no teleprompter, no boisterous and adoring
crowd, no biased moderator or media contingent on stage, willing and
able to bail him out or prop him up. Had he deployed his usual
repertoire of race-baiting, envy, class warfare, or rich-bashing he
would have looked simply crazy. He had to stand there fully exposed and
completely himself ā a cypher, facing a superior man and candidate. Wow. I couldnāt have said it better myself! Thanks, Lisa.
Iām not clueless about the real Barack Obama standing there ā or is it the unreal one? Perhaps, per the Los Angeles Times, itās Barry Soetoro, one-time foreign exchange student? Who knows? Whatever. Last month, in my Forbesessay on the party conventions,
I described Mr. Obama as āa phony, an empty suit, an uneducated
incompetent whoās less concerned to govern rationally than he is to
sanctimoniously lecture us all, through his ever-present teleprompter,
on the alleged morality of his envy-ridden, Christian-socialist dogmas.
No matter what pain his policies cause or what dreams they crush, Obama
thinks heās all about āfairness.ā He pretends that heās the nationās
sole advocate of justice ā of what he calls āsocial justice,ā which is,
in fact, brazen injustice, since it entails taking from each according
to ability and giving to each according to need.ā
But thatās more about substance. What about biography? Perhaps the
closest Iāve come, so far, to glimpsing what Lisa has glimpsed, was in
my Forbes essay last July, āAn Undeserving President,ā where I wrote:
āAt the end of a century-long down-trend in free,
American government came a rather strange man, one Barack Obama, who
became the latest U.S. president. But how? Mentored by Marxist parents
and the avowed communist, Frank Marshall Davis, a young Obama entered
but soon dropped out of Occidental College, then went to Columbia,
then Harvard, under who-knows-what āaffirmative actionā scheme (and
with no public transcript or record of accomplishment), then in 1996
sued to eject his Democrat rivals from the primary ballot in Illinois,
on technicalities, to become a non-entity in the stateās Senate, then
for many years attended the anti-American racist hate speeches of
Reverend Jeremiah Wright, then issued a ghost-written memoir chronicling
his rather empty life of racial resentment, pot-smoking, and
non-achievement (a book that later garnered him millions because he ran
for president), then gave a speech at the 2004 Democrat convention that
the media adored, and then became the U.S. president, not by pledging
fidelity to the principles of liberty, justice, and the Constitution,
but by promising to āspread the wealthā and āfundamentally transformā
America in an opposite direction. Oh yes, Obama also got the Nobel Peace
Prize, for no fathomable reason. This is the age of the righteous
un-deserving, as Obama amply demonstrates. Everyone gets a trophy,
regardless of what he does or doesnāt do.ā
If our account of Mr. Obamaās loss in the first debate is valid,
heāll also lose the forthcoming two debates, unless he can lean on a
participating audience and media, as certain (ātown hallā) debating
formats permit. But even if he loses all the debates, he can still win
re-election. The adage which declares āmay the best man winā pertains
only to fair, talent-oriented contests; democracy, in contrast, rarely
picks the right leaders. Mr. Salsman is the president of InterMarket Forecasting, Inc., an investment research and advisory firm. Forbes
