Strangers and Comrades

Nobody’s Opinion; I’m not really sure where to start tonight. I was waiting for the speech that was coming from our President tonight with great nervousness. I must admit, it was not one I wanted to miss.

I wanted him to be perfect.

Before the speech, General Ramsey Clark, the man who a British General once stated almost started WWIII in the Clinton administration, was talking to Bill O’Reilly about how we should TALK to Iran…why, we ALWAYS talked to Russia! Why just send him and Bill over!

Right, we always talked to them until Ronald Reagan, thank God, had had enough talk.

But while watching the speech, I kept having strange feelings; something just kept popping up in my brain. I felt uneasy. Really strange.

This used to happen with songs.

Songs I hated. Like “Strangers in the Night” by Frank Sinatra. (Sorry Sinatra fans; I like many of his songs…just not that one.)

I used to really, really, hate that song. If there is one song in the world I hate, it’s that one.

Sometimes on a sunny day, without thinking about it, I could be anywhere, and to my own horror would just start singing it.

Yeah I definitely had that “there is a stranger in this night” feeling.

So there he was, looking very astute in his black business suit----no American flag behind him, giving the speech, in of all places the basement White House library. I noticed that all the lights in the White House were dark.

What? Was he hiding from al-Qaeda? Al Sharpton?

The first thing that didn’t seem right is that this was not a typical Bush speech. It was obviously not written by him…who knows who wrote it, maybe Kissinger. Still, he did not mess at all! Good going Mr. President!

“Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me.”
That’s good George…taking all responsibility for mistakes. That’s shows integrity. (Although he said so matter-of-factly it was weird.)

If we fail, he said, they would use “oil revenues to fund their ambitions---On September the 11th, 2001, we saw what a refuge for extremists on the other side of the world could bring to the streets of our cities. For the safety of our people, America must succeed in Iraq.”
Okay, that means we now control the oil, and if they get a hold of it, our country will shut down basically because we are dependent on their oil…Iran would come in and control it all. We’d all be riding bikes to Starbucks when the nukes came. Yes, Mr. President, unlike most liberals, we DO remember that day.

“Our past efforts to secure Baghdad failed for two principal reasons: There were not enough Iraqi and American troops to secure neighborhoods---and too many restrictions on the troops we did have”
Now, whose fault is that? Any fool drunk could have told you that in the beginning! You even had previous war plans that said you would need at least 100,000 troops to invade, and 400,000 to maintain it all, to pull this off.

So, was this another political decision? NOW…you come out with the decision to actually fight the war. Why did we not do this sooner?

Or will our boys just be sent to “assist” the Iraq’s like they are “assisting” our border guard?

So up until that moment, I thought it was good…but that stranger kept coming back…who WAS this guy and why did I feel so…funny?

Then he said that the Iraq government was going to “give every Iraq citizen a stake in the country’s economy. Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis.”
I suppose they think that the thousand year feud between the Sunnis and the Shiites will come to an end once they get some money in their hands. Money has not done anything to stop the feud between the Democrats and the Republicans so far, and they are a bit more civilized (Well, they don’t slit throats…not yet.)

It sure would be nice if the families of the men and woman who lost their lives “liberating” Iraq got some of that “redistribution” for their sacrifice…but don’t hold your breath.

Anyway…that’s when the stranger came in…it was starting to become clearer, that word…share was bothering me. Pretty close to the word “redistribution” only President Bush said the word “share”

Down in Venezuela there is a progressive leader named Chavez who has been “sharing” the money he makes from oil, and the people loved him so much, they reelected him. And now, so he can “share” some more he has declared that all businesses belong to the state (which is him) and he has a name for this “sharing” idea…he calls socialism. And that idea was so great he has decided to get rid of term limits and be President forever. He considered himself to be following in the steps of Jesus who was the ultimate socialist he said.

But in Iraq, “sharing” is not socialism.

“Socialism or Death,” he declared.

Spoken like a true communist. The stranger had a prodigious plan.

A Chavez supporter, a street vendor, said that Chavez “has dedicated himself to studying communist, socialist and democratic models and has taken the best of those models.”

John Adams once did the same thing, called it Discourses on Government, and came up with a Republic as the best. The street vendors did not comment.

Mikhail Gorbachev said in Perestroika: “No matter what the opponents of communism think, communism originated and exists in the interests of man and his freedom in order to defend his genuine rights and justices on earth. Communism has a tremendous potential for humanitarianism. The whole world needs restructuring and qualitative change and progressive development. A Socialist can only be achieved through a communist’s program that would demolish the capitalistic order. This is the inevitable evolution of the world.”

I guess you all know he hangs out with the Democrats…they are NOT strangers.

Communism is redistribution of wealth. (In the purified Marxist view)

Socialisms believes too in “sharing” All our democrats all harping on a socialized medicine is redistribution all your money to pay for everyone else’s health care.

There is a very thin line between the two systems. In fact, Communists believe that in history you go from Feudalism, to capitalistic, to socialism to…communism!

And today, that governor who ran as a conservative, the movie star married to a Kennedy, who is related to the Kennedy who wants universal heath care---Arnold Schwarzenegger---is mandating universal heath care for all California. So they can become a Nation-State.

“Let us blaze the way for the US, for China, and fro the rest of the world.”

“Stranger in the night, exchanging glances, wondering in the night, what were the chances, we’d be making love, before the night was throoooooough!”

Okay…Stop it! I said. This is George kick-ass Bush! He is going to go and finally win! Get back to the speech!

“We will give our commanders and civilians greater flexibility to spend funds for economic assistance; we will double the number of provincial reconstruction teams.”
Wow, I hope that idea works out better than it did in Katrina. How many billions were somehow “misplaced?”
That’s going to bring lots of money (from you and me of course) to just the right people who have construction companies, and it sounds like they are really going to have a lot of work, because they plan on doing some damage this time. Stocks options will go up!

“By advancing liberty across a troubled region.”
Who says the conservatives can’t be noble and want to save the world too? Liberty is what our brave men and woman still believe in, God Bless them one and all.

But will the love of liberty trump the hatred for us PAGANS?

Well, the speech was almost over. I though it was well written, and made a lot of sense, despite the stranger in the night…what in the world was I thinking…silly me.

And then it happened. He started saying things that invoke that hated melody…

“We can begin by working together to increase the size of the active Army and Marine Corps, so that America has the Armed Forces we need for the 21st century. We also need to examine ways to mobilize talented American civilians to deploy overseas whey they can help build democratic institutions in communities and nations recovering from war and tyranny.”

Gee, building the armed forces is a great idea. We need a strong standing defense. But, sending Americans out to spread democracy all over the world? Mr. President who is going to pay for this? We want to help out…we do…just send all the illegal aliens back to Mexico and we might be more willing to help you out.

You help us, we help you.

And then the stranger hit a real sour note. It was just one word….it was a word that has been associated with communism before I was born….

Comrade.

“They have watched their comrades give their lives to ensure our liberty.”

Okay, I know you’re speaking of the families that have lost their sons and husbands and daughters…but couldn’t you have used the world “loved ones” instead of comrades, Mr. President?

Has an American President ever used that word describing any portion of his people before? Was I the only one who found it offensive?

Ronald Reagan would have gone nuts…he would have fired the speechwriter right on the spot.

Somewhere tonight, in the basement of the White House, is a man named President George W. Bush, and he is probably whistling that song “Stranger in the Night.”

May God help him, and us.

Because if this doesn’t work, we will be strangers in our own land and it will be as dark as the White House Basement.

Nobody’s Perfect; Gorbachev also said “We invite our Chinese comrades to work together with us.” Mikhail had a hard time getting that word comrade out of his vocabulary.

Nobody Knows; Just where do they expect to get people to volunteer for the army, when everyone knows there is a big bloodbath coming?

Nobody Cares; One way for this whole thing to come together, would be if we were attacked before the next election. The draft would be established, the people would wake up to the danger, and President George W. Bush would fulfill what seems to be his destiny…

How else can they get Hillary elected without having to make too many speeches?