When I found this speech transcript I decided it would be an interesting thing to discuss on this forum:
I know this is fairly old and straying into the extremist area, but do you guys think he has a good point? The guy who showed this to me made some extra comments, which I might post later, but I want to know what you guys think about this.
THOSE PROTESTING THE IRAQ CONFLICT AREN'T PRO-PEACE AS MUCH AS THEY'RE ANTI-AMERICAN
A speech by Don Feder at A Rally For Our Troops at Notre Dame University, April 10, 2003
I could speak to you today about the justice and necessity of our intervention in Iraq. I could focus on our military – the courage, tenacity, skill and sacrifice of our fighting men. I could speak of the evils of Saddam Hussein’s fascist regime and the clear and present danger it posed to the American people.
Instead, I want to talk about the anti-war movement, so-called – because there’s a civil war, a political war, a cultural war going on in this country. And its outcome every bit as important as the war in Iraq.
It’s a 40-year war, at least. The first shots were fired when I was a college student in the late 1960s. The conflict continued during the McGovern campaign and the Carter and Clinton administrations. It’s a war for the soul of our republic – a war fought on such far-flung battlefields as movies and television, the foreign policy debate, public school curricula and college education.
My message to you is simple – that pathetic collection of ideologues, malcontents, misfits and miscreants masquerading as an anti-war movement isn’t pro-peace as much as it’s anti-American. It loathes America and everything we stand for. It’s opposed to our intervention in Iraq because it is opposed to America.
There are exceptions. Some of the protestors are naïve and uninformed. Others are sheep who graze with the herd. However, by and large, the leaders and activists of this movement are radicals who are alienated from their society and their people.
Their rancid rhetoric betrays them.
At a demonstration in San Francisco not long ago, activists carried a banner reading: “We Support Our Troops When They Shoot Their Officers.” Well, thank God they’re pacifists. Imagine what they’d be like if they believed in violence.
Speaking before 3,000 students and faculty at a teach-in at Columbia University on March 23, Professor Nicholas De Genova said, “The only true heroes are those who find ways that help defeat the U.S. military.” U.S. military is a euphemism for America. He then added, “I personally would like to see a million Mogadishus.” This refers to the 1993 ambush in Somalia when guerrillas shot down two Black Hawk helicopters, killed 18 U.S. Army Rangers and dragged their bodies through the streets.
None of the 3,000 people present booed the professor, or turned their backs on him, or left the room. De Genova was loudly applauded when he latter declared, “If we really believe that this war is criminal … then we have to believe in the victory of the Iraqi people and the defeat of the U.S. war machine.”
Excuse me -- the Iraqi people? Would those be the ones we saw dancing in the streets of Baghdad, spitting on pictures of Saddam Hussein? We’re presently feeding the people of Iraq, after Saddam starved them for the past 12 years to build his evil toys. We’re the guys who’ve taken the jackbooted heel of the tyrant off the necks of the Iraqi people. If the Iraqi people are ever to enjoy the basic freedoms we take for granted, it will be thanks to the success of the U.S. war machine.
In a letter to the editor of the Columbia Spectator, Professor De Genova tried to explain what he really meant by his “million Mogadishus” remark. De Genova wrote that in his speech: “I outlined a long history of U.S. invasions, wars of conquest, military occupations, and colonization in order to establish that imperialism and white supremacy have been constitutive of U.S. nation-state formation and U.S. nationalism. In that context, I stressed the necessity of repudiating all forms of U.S. patriotism.” Given that many of our colleges and universities are little islands of Stalinism in a sea of relative normalcy, I predict a bright future for professor De Genova.
Cut through the verbiage, and the professor is saying America is evil, that we’ve engaged in wars of conquest, military occupations and colonization -- that racism is the very essence of Americanism. Anyone who believes this is a traitor of the heart, a Benedict Arnold of the spirit. They should pack up and relocate to a nation compatible with their contemptible worldview – say Cuba or North Korea.
This disease of the soul isn’t confined to the academic leftist. Shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, Katha Pollitt, a writer for the liberal magazine The Nation, disclosed that when her 13-year-old daughter requested that the family fly the American flag outside their New York City apartment, this veteran America-hater told the child that her nation’s banner, “stands for jingoism and vengeance and war.” Three thousand of their countrymen lay buried beneath tons of rubble, their remains barely cold, and the Pollitts of America still couldn’t suppress their deep-seated loathing for their native land.
In Hull, Massachusetts, not far from where I live, Selectman Regina Burke refuses to stand for the pledge of allegiance at official functions. Burke explains, “Every time I see the flag, I can picture George Bush wearing it as a toga, and I don’t know what it stands for anymore other than for his particular financial group and followers.”
I doubt that Burke ever understood what the flag stands for. By the way, it does not represent a party or a president, but a nation, a history and a heritage. “I’m upset with the policies of this administration, so I won’t stand for the pledge of allegiance.” Isn’t that infantile? Burke should honor the flag that upholds her right to dissent and the heroes who fought and died under it for all of the freedoms she enjoys. But the left understands none of this.
You may think I’ve picked some extreme examples. Then, consider this – what’s the most popular sign at “peace rallies”? No Blood for Oil. And what does this imply? Quite simply, that America is waging war in Iraq to steal its resources. That we’re the modern equivalent of the Huns or Visigoths swooping down on the poor, defenseless people of Iraq to carry off their oil.
You have to be a member of the legion of the lobotomized to believe something so stupid. If all we wanted was Iraq’s oil, then instead of going to war, we would have lifted the embargo and cut a deal with Saddam, who would have loved to have given us all we wanted – at cut-rate prices. By the way, did we keep Kuwait’s oil after the 1991 Gulf War? If we did, I wouldn’t be paying $1.67 a gallon for gas.
Far from taking Iraq’s wealth, when the war is over, we’ll pour our wealth into that nation – probably to the tune of $75 billion in reconstruction aid.
No blood for oil? If we’d let Saddam Hussein acquire nuclear weapons and supply chemical and biological weapons to terrorists, there would have been blood all right – our blood. It would have made the World Trade Center look like a love-in.
The slogan “No Blood for Oil” is classic Marxism – the dogma that whenever a capitalist country goes to war it’s to grab someone else’s resources. Thus, all human affairs are reduced to grubby economic principles. So, why did we go to war with the Germans in 1941 – to steal their knockwurst? What were we after when we fought Japan across the Pacific for 3 ½ bloody years – its sushi?
There’s an exquisite irony here. In the peace movement, you have a bunch of Marxists who are rallying to the defense of a fascist. It’s the Hitler-Stalin pact all over again.
But seriously, how many American flags have you seen at anti-war protests? Have you ever heard a speaker at one of these demonstrations stand up and say: “Yes, I oppose this war. I disagree with the president’s policies. But here’s what I think is fine and noble about America.” Ask these people what they like about the United States, and you’re likely to be met by deafening silence – what we in talk radio call dead air.
They think the history of the United States is a chronicle of oppression, exploitation, racism, genocide and other crimes against humanity. They honestly believe that U.S. history began with slavery, then proceeded to the dispossession of the Indians, Jim Crow, sweat shops and strike breakers, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, McCarthyism, My Lai and now our awful “aggression” against Iraq.
`
Did they leave anything out? Oh, just the sacrifices of pioneers and settlers, the Founding Fathers and the model of representative government they provided to the world, the war to preserve the union and end slavery, the shores of refuge, the building of the greatest industrial engine in history (one that conferred incalculable benefits on humanity), the defeat of communism and fascism in the century past, the inventions and discoveries that flowed from our workshops and laboratories, and trillions of dollars of American foreign aid – just a few little things like that.
Colonialism? There has never been a nation like America – a world power less inclined to empire building. After World War I, France and Britain divided up the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East, not America. Following the Second World War, we could have colonized Germany, Japan and half of Europe. Instead, we rebuilt the devastated economies of our enemies and created firewalls to keep Europe and Asia free.
But, again, the left always assumes the worst of America. It’s one thing to disagree with the policies of a particular administration – God knows, I disagreed with Clinton’s flower-child foreign policy – it’s something else to have chronic paranoid fantasies about your country’s character and intentions.
In and of itself, the anti-war/anti-American movement does not pose a threat. Less than 30 percent of the American people agree with it on the war – and most of them are repulsed by its antics.
But the movement reflects the mentality of the left – which exerts an influence in this country out of all proportion to its numbers. The ideologues of the anti-war movement have their counterparts in Hollywood, academia, public education and the news media. Multiculturalism is their invention. They are the reason American history is no longer taught in American schools. They are why depictions of the American military went from “Sergeant York” and “The Sands of Iwo Jima”to “Platoon” and “Full Metal Jacket.” Their dogma fills our airwaves, newspapers, public school classrooms and college lecture halls.
Ladies and gentleman, I urge you to support our troops by fighting for America on the home front – by confronting and refuting the toxic lies of an anti-American elite that cloaks its evil in idealism.
As our troops are willing to brave bullets on the battlefield, you must be willing to brave scorn and derision to tell the truth about America and help to raise up the next generation of patriots
A speech by Don Feder at A Rally For Our Troops at Notre Dame University, April 10, 2003
I could speak to you today about the justice and necessity of our intervention in Iraq. I could focus on our military – the courage, tenacity, skill and sacrifice of our fighting men. I could speak of the evils of Saddam Hussein’s fascist regime and the clear and present danger it posed to the American people.
Instead, I want to talk about the anti-war movement, so-called – because there’s a civil war, a political war, a cultural war going on in this country. And its outcome every bit as important as the war in Iraq.
It’s a 40-year war, at least. The first shots were fired when I was a college student in the late 1960s. The conflict continued during the McGovern campaign and the Carter and Clinton administrations. It’s a war for the soul of our republic – a war fought on such far-flung battlefields as movies and television, the foreign policy debate, public school curricula and college education.
My message to you is simple – that pathetic collection of ideologues, malcontents, misfits and miscreants masquerading as an anti-war movement isn’t pro-peace as much as it’s anti-American. It loathes America and everything we stand for. It’s opposed to our intervention in Iraq because it is opposed to America.
There are exceptions. Some of the protestors are naïve and uninformed. Others are sheep who graze with the herd. However, by and large, the leaders and activists of this movement are radicals who are alienated from their society and their people.
Their rancid rhetoric betrays them.
At a demonstration in San Francisco not long ago, activists carried a banner reading: “We Support Our Troops When They Shoot Their Officers.” Well, thank God they’re pacifists. Imagine what they’d be like if they believed in violence.
Speaking before 3,000 students and faculty at a teach-in at Columbia University on March 23, Professor Nicholas De Genova said, “The only true heroes are those who find ways that help defeat the U.S. military.” U.S. military is a euphemism for America. He then added, “I personally would like to see a million Mogadishus.” This refers to the 1993 ambush in Somalia when guerrillas shot down two Black Hawk helicopters, killed 18 U.S. Army Rangers and dragged their bodies through the streets.
None of the 3,000 people present booed the professor, or turned their backs on him, or left the room. De Genova was loudly applauded when he latter declared, “If we really believe that this war is criminal … then we have to believe in the victory of the Iraqi people and the defeat of the U.S. war machine.”
Excuse me -- the Iraqi people? Would those be the ones we saw dancing in the streets of Baghdad, spitting on pictures of Saddam Hussein? We’re presently feeding the people of Iraq, after Saddam starved them for the past 12 years to build his evil toys. We’re the guys who’ve taken the jackbooted heel of the tyrant off the necks of the Iraqi people. If the Iraqi people are ever to enjoy the basic freedoms we take for granted, it will be thanks to the success of the U.S. war machine.
In a letter to the editor of the Columbia Spectator, Professor De Genova tried to explain what he really meant by his “million Mogadishus” remark. De Genova wrote that in his speech: “I outlined a long history of U.S. invasions, wars of conquest, military occupations, and colonization in order to establish that imperialism and white supremacy have been constitutive of U.S. nation-state formation and U.S. nationalism. In that context, I stressed the necessity of repudiating all forms of U.S. patriotism.” Given that many of our colleges and universities are little islands of Stalinism in a sea of relative normalcy, I predict a bright future for professor De Genova.
Cut through the verbiage, and the professor is saying America is evil, that we’ve engaged in wars of conquest, military occupations and colonization -- that racism is the very essence of Americanism. Anyone who believes this is a traitor of the heart, a Benedict Arnold of the spirit. They should pack up and relocate to a nation compatible with their contemptible worldview – say Cuba or North Korea.
This disease of the soul isn’t confined to the academic leftist. Shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, Katha Pollitt, a writer for the liberal magazine The Nation, disclosed that when her 13-year-old daughter requested that the family fly the American flag outside their New York City apartment, this veteran America-hater told the child that her nation’s banner, “stands for jingoism and vengeance and war.” Three thousand of their countrymen lay buried beneath tons of rubble, their remains barely cold, and the Pollitts of America still couldn’t suppress their deep-seated loathing for their native land.
In Hull, Massachusetts, not far from where I live, Selectman Regina Burke refuses to stand for the pledge of allegiance at official functions. Burke explains, “Every time I see the flag, I can picture George Bush wearing it as a toga, and I don’t know what it stands for anymore other than for his particular financial group and followers.”
I doubt that Burke ever understood what the flag stands for. By the way, it does not represent a party or a president, but a nation, a history and a heritage. “I’m upset with the policies of this administration, so I won’t stand for the pledge of allegiance.” Isn’t that infantile? Burke should honor the flag that upholds her right to dissent and the heroes who fought and died under it for all of the freedoms she enjoys. But the left understands none of this.
You may think I’ve picked some extreme examples. Then, consider this – what’s the most popular sign at “peace rallies”? No Blood for Oil. And what does this imply? Quite simply, that America is waging war in Iraq to steal its resources. That we’re the modern equivalent of the Huns or Visigoths swooping down on the poor, defenseless people of Iraq to carry off their oil.
You have to be a member of the legion of the lobotomized to believe something so stupid. If all we wanted was Iraq’s oil, then instead of going to war, we would have lifted the embargo and cut a deal with Saddam, who would have loved to have given us all we wanted – at cut-rate prices. By the way, did we keep Kuwait’s oil after the 1991 Gulf War? If we did, I wouldn’t be paying $1.67 a gallon for gas.
Far from taking Iraq’s wealth, when the war is over, we’ll pour our wealth into that nation – probably to the tune of $75 billion in reconstruction aid.
No blood for oil? If we’d let Saddam Hussein acquire nuclear weapons and supply chemical and biological weapons to terrorists, there would have been blood all right – our blood. It would have made the World Trade Center look like a love-in.
The slogan “No Blood for Oil” is classic Marxism – the dogma that whenever a capitalist country goes to war it’s to grab someone else’s resources. Thus, all human affairs are reduced to grubby economic principles. So, why did we go to war with the Germans in 1941 – to steal their knockwurst? What were we after when we fought Japan across the Pacific for 3 ½ bloody years – its sushi?
There’s an exquisite irony here. In the peace movement, you have a bunch of Marxists who are rallying to the defense of a fascist. It’s the Hitler-Stalin pact all over again.
But seriously, how many American flags have you seen at anti-war protests? Have you ever heard a speaker at one of these demonstrations stand up and say: “Yes, I oppose this war. I disagree with the president’s policies. But here’s what I think is fine and noble about America.” Ask these people what they like about the United States, and you’re likely to be met by deafening silence – what we in talk radio call dead air.
They think the history of the United States is a chronicle of oppression, exploitation, racism, genocide and other crimes against humanity. They honestly believe that U.S. history began with slavery, then proceeded to the dispossession of the Indians, Jim Crow, sweat shops and strike breakers, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, McCarthyism, My Lai and now our awful “aggression” against Iraq.
`
Did they leave anything out? Oh, just the sacrifices of pioneers and settlers, the Founding Fathers and the model of representative government they provided to the world, the war to preserve the union and end slavery, the shores of refuge, the building of the greatest industrial engine in history (one that conferred incalculable benefits on humanity), the defeat of communism and fascism in the century past, the inventions and discoveries that flowed from our workshops and laboratories, and trillions of dollars of American foreign aid – just a few little things like that.
Colonialism? There has never been a nation like America – a world power less inclined to empire building. After World War I, France and Britain divided up the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East, not America. Following the Second World War, we could have colonized Germany, Japan and half of Europe. Instead, we rebuilt the devastated economies of our enemies and created firewalls to keep Europe and Asia free.
But, again, the left always assumes the worst of America. It’s one thing to disagree with the policies of a particular administration – God knows, I disagreed with Clinton’s flower-child foreign policy – it’s something else to have chronic paranoid fantasies about your country’s character and intentions.
In and of itself, the anti-war/anti-American movement does not pose a threat. Less than 30 percent of the American people agree with it on the war – and most of them are repulsed by its antics.
But the movement reflects the mentality of the left – which exerts an influence in this country out of all proportion to its numbers. The ideologues of the anti-war movement have their counterparts in Hollywood, academia, public education and the news media. Multiculturalism is their invention. They are the reason American history is no longer taught in American schools. They are why depictions of the American military went from “Sergeant York” and “The Sands of Iwo Jima”to “Platoon” and “Full Metal Jacket.” Their dogma fills our airwaves, newspapers, public school classrooms and college lecture halls.
Ladies and gentleman, I urge you to support our troops by fighting for America on the home front – by confronting and refuting the toxic lies of an anti-American elite that cloaks its evil in idealism.
As our troops are willing to brave bullets on the battlefield, you must be willing to brave scorn and derision to tell the truth about America and help to raise up the next generation of patriots
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