Retreat on all fronts

Under President George W. Bush the United States is retreating on all
fronts. We are giving up our borders to illegal immigrants, we are giving up
our country’s defense to satisfy domestic malcontents, and we continue to
accommodate Russian double-dealing.

On point after point we are ready to negotiate; we are ready to compromise, because negotiation buys us more time to shop and enjoy. But with each negotiation we grow weaker as the time grows shorter. We can bribe our enemies today, but tomorrow these enemies
may be strong enough to demand tribute. Giving away your vital interests
cannot be a successful policy in the long run. You can only put down your
own military for so long. Eventually there comes a day of reckoning, even a
day of infamy.

Consider a few incidents which illustrate the vile expedients of the
present day.

The wire services reported “confusion” and “anger” within the Pentagon
last Thursday after the White House decided to give up the much disputed
Vieques bombing range in Puerto Rico. In this affair Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld made it sound as though the Navy were abandoning the Vieques
bombing range on its own initiative. But Navy officials were reportedly
stunned and dismayed by the decision, which effectively caved in to leftist
dissenters attempting to prevent the effective use of a vital Navy bombing
range.

But this is not the only White House betrayal of the U.S. military.
Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld is supposedly calling for a “forced march”
toward a new U.S. military strategy which sets aside our two-war policy. In
other words, we are talking about cutbacks that could undermine the
military’s ability to fight two major wars at once.

Ignoring the fact that America is pinned down in Kosovo, with fresh
pressures to police Macedonia, Rumsfeld’s new strategy is rumored to
shortchange military requirements in favor of political and economic
requirements. This has been billed now as an “emphasis on strategy.”
Rumsfeld says that his strategy will drive budgets instead of budgets driving
strategy. But these words do not satisfy the Air Force’s need for spare
parts, the Navy’s need for additional fuel or the Army’s ammunition shortages.

Bush, who promised to support the military, is proving to be a large
disappointment for those who wanted to shore up weaknesses in the armed
forces. Some military analysts and Pentagon officers are privately referring
to the president’s election promises as “Read My Lips II.”

It would seem that strategic concerns have all but evaporated in the
face of economic concerns. Bush’s missile defense scheme is so much
pie-in-the-sky to a military with aging equipment, poor morale and shortages.
Clearly the president’s strategic vision is smoke and mirrors. It is more
about words and perceptions than about hard military realities.

What we see here is what we have seen for decades. Our country has
shifted to the left without even realizing it. The “conservatives”
(so-called) in this country have retreated before the radical left on issue
after issue. The fatal issue, I predict, will be the defense issue. It is
one thing to let illegal aliens cross the border by the millions. Yes, there
might be an ethnic civil war in 50 years as a result, but something of the
nation would survive. Yet a failure to defend against the Russians and
Chinese, who have been building up a genocidal capability against us, could
spell the end of America once and for all.

But this thought never seems to occur to anyone. Today’s national
orientation is so narcissistic and short-term that we do not think about
issues like national survival. We take our country’s survival for granted.
We therefore bargain away our advantages and hobble our own military
preparations.

Engaged in a culture war against traditional American institutions,
the left has silently joined with economic conservatives in disrespecting and
dismissing the U.S. military as an institution vital to national survival.
They would rather make peace with the socialists in order to make money.
Therefore the military function is left to atrophy. Open disrespect is
allowed. This is obvious in popular movies where generals are portrayed as
idiots and scoundrels. But it also appears in the attitudes of professors,
teachers and school administrators.

On June 8 the Associated Press reported an incident at an Indiana high
school in which two young marines were turned away from their high-school
graduating ceremonies because they appeared in full dress uniform. Pfc.
David Hobbs and Pvt. Josh Beam were evicted from their graduation at Elkhart
Memorial High School for violating the school’s dress code which mandates the
wearing of a tie under the graduation gown. The two young servicemen were
escorted off school property without receiving their diplomas.

Can you imagine this happening in 1951, when dress codes were a more
serious matter? The fact is, an exception would have been made. But not
today. Once again we see how the left has advanced. We see how patriotism
has retreated. Instead of firing Marxist professors and teachers, who
denounce the very state that pays their salaries, we have let them become
tenured radicals.

The general subversion of our society has many sub-components. The
fact that we rarely catch or effectively prosecute spies and traitors is yet
another component of retreat.

It was reported last week that the Justice Department isn’t going for
the death penalty in the case of Robert Hanssen, an FBI counterintelligence
official accused of spying for Russia. According to press reports there is
talk of a breakthrough in “negotiations” with the alleged traitor that could
lead to a plea bargain.

Oh happy day.

Looking back at our wet and limp prosecution of Chinese spies in
recent years, I get this sinking feeling, like we’re going to be snookered
again. When do we stop negotiating and do away with communist-inspired
traitors the way we did away with Timothy McVeigh? If the right-wing killer
deserves execution isn’t the left-wing traitor also deserving?

And what about the businessman traitor? What about those who sell our
country’s technology to China and Russia? Isn’t giving aid and comfort to
the enemy the very definition of treason?

Or are we so comfortable and stupid as to imagine we have no enemies?