FAIR QUESTION (Letter to the Independent Coast Observer)

Conservatives had no problem with President Obama ordering Navy Seals to go in to Pakistan to kill Osama Bin Laden. But what about the Democrats? The Left-Wing of the Democrat Party? The anti-war protestors? The mainstream media? Did all these “Bush is evil” folks temporarily lose their principles in a poker game, or did they just receive new talking points? Talk about turning on a dime! A Democrat President, using data obtained in part from enhanced interrogation techniques, orders a kill mission without notifying the Pakistanis and without involving NATO or the UN. Did the “read them their rights” liberals publicly denounce their citizenship and move to Canada en masse? No. Most are ecstatic. Some danced in the streets! 

Not long ago these folks were clamoring to impeach former President Bush and to imprison CIA interrogators. But with a Democrat in the White House the anti-war fervor that was “blowin’ in the wind” during the Bush administration has become as passé as a feathered boa. The “Women in Black” quietly found better things to do on Fridays than demonstrate at the Post Office, and those letters to the ICO denouncing “war-mongering” dried up faster than frog piss in the Mojave. Yet the Iraqi conflict continues and President Obama has “surged” additional troops into Afghanistan while stepping up drone attacks in Pakistan. Did I mention that the President allowed himself to be dragged into an embarrassing “let’s kill Qaddafi” stalemate in Libya? (But we don’t talk about that.) 

Given these Jekyll/Hyde behaviors by Democrats, you can’t blame conservatives for wondering whether the Left’s much-celebrated anti-war protest movement was not so much about war as it was about politics. Imagine that! Are we all conservatives now? It seems a fair question.

Jim Littlejohn

A SICKNESS (Letter to the Independent Coast Observer)

Thanks to a small group of Navy Seals, Osama Bin Laden has been sent to meet his 72 virgins. President Obama is receiving a lot of credit for this successful action, and he should. He certainly would have received blame had it gone awry. We should all be thankful that a full measure of revenge combined with justice has been handed out to the mastermind of 911 by our courageous Navy Seals.

I was in Quebec on the morning of 911. We immediately headed for Burlington, Vermont and a potential flight home. The airport was closed, so we drove another 14 hours to reach Washington, D.C., arriving at my step-daughter’s house around 11:00 P.M. Within 15 minutes of our arrival, my (then) son-in-law casually remarked that the 3000+ people who died in the Twin Towers got exactly what they deserved! I exploded in anger at him, but he didn’t back down. The next morning he mocked a stockbroker who had dissolved in tears in front of a TV camera. Back home I read an article in the ICO about a small group of locals holding a ceremony (celebration?) on the beach in which the leader described the fall of the Towers as “something graceful” to behold. The ICO editorial that week opined that “America had been brought to her knees.” 

These post-911 incidents marked my first realization that there was a sickness in this country that went beyond legitimate political disagreements. This anti-American sickness still resides in the twisted philosophy of many on the Far Left and has become a stain on the Democrat Party. It seems fitting that a Left-leaning President has kept in place key anti-terrorism policies designed to protect America and the good for which it stands.

Jim Littlejohn