The presidential campaign in the United States of America is almost a year old, and their is almost a year to go, but already the candidates have clearly marked their territories. Rudy Giuliani has marked out his territory and it is basically the same territory that Bush has marked out for himself since September 11th 2001.
He marked it out clearly, in no uncertain terms, at a Lincoln Day dinner back in April by saying and I quote...
“If any Republican is elected president — and I think obviously I would be best at this — we will remain on offense and will anticipate what (the terrorists) will do and try to stop them before they do it... But the question is how long will it take and how many casualties will we have. If we are on defense, we will have more losses and it will go on longer.”
It was a speech which had the result of angering decent human beings, and managing to make Republicanism look colder than Winter in Stalin's Soviet Union. He proved beyond reasonable doubt that he was not in touch with the reality that faces us all.
But now, after a speech last night to The Federalist Society, a group of ultra conservative legal eagles, that America had a divine right to be the world's policeman by proclaiming...
"It was this nation that saved the world from the two great tyrannies of the 20th Century--Nazism and communism. It's this country that is going to save civilzation from Islamic terrorism.''
Rudy Giuliani has now gone from being proved wrong beyond reasonable doubt, to being wrong, beyond a shadow of a doubt!
First of all, America had very little part in combatting the Nazis in World War 2. The British government of Neville Chamberlain declared war on the Nazis on September 3rd 1939, after the Nazi invasion of Poland two days earlier. Prime Minister Chamberlain spoke on BBC Radio just after 11am...
"I am speaking to you from the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street. This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final note stating that, unless we hear from them by 11 o'clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany."
Later that same day, US President Franklin D Roosevelt made the following statement, which clearly and unambigously set out the American position.
"...You must master at the outset a simple but unalterable fact... When peace has been broken anywhere the peace of all countries everywhere is in danger. It is easy for you and for me to shrug our shoulders and say that conflicts taking place thousands of miles from the continent of the US and indeed thousands of miles from the whole American hemisphere do not seriously affect the Americas and that all the United States had to do is ignore them and go about its own business. Passionately though we may desire detachment we are forced to realise that every word that come through the air, every ship that sails the sea, every battle that is fought, does affect the American future.
Let no man or woman thoughtlessly or falsely talk of America sending its armies to European fields. At this moment there is being prepared a proclamation of American neutrality...
This nation will remain a neutral nation. But I cannot ask that every American remain neutral in thought as well."
America CHOSE not to enter the war. They CHOSE to avoid all combat for over 2 years. Then, war was thrust upon them, not by the Nazis, but by the Japanese.
December 7th 1941 was the date, when the Imperial Japanese Navy launched what they considered a "preventative strike" against the United States Pacific Fleet base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. The intent behind the strike was a simple one, prevent the United States coming into the war and protect Imperial Japan's advance in Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, or Indonesia, as it is now known.
The result, on the other hand was just the opposite. Instead of keeping America out, it drew them in. The attack, occuring BEFORE a formal declaration of war, shocked not only the American people, but most of the world. It forced the American government's hand. No longer could they stay neutral, but defensive. No longer could they stay isolated in a war that was truly threatening to pull every nation in the world into it. They had to come into the war, and they had to side against the Japanese, and by association, against the Nazis.
The Americans defeated the Japanese, and did aid The British, The Russians, most of the British Empire and most of Europe in defeating the Nazis, but do not overstate America's role, Mr Giuliani. You were late, ad you aided, but you were not the decisive factor in the war. Russia's involvment could equally be called decisive, because it meant the Nazis were caught in an allied pincer movement. America, the UK and the various European resistance movements on one side, and the great Russian bear on the other. Once that happened, the result was always inevitable.
And as for Communism, the "other great tyranny America defeated", nothing could be further from the truth.
Put bluntly and simply, Communism in Europe defeated itself. It imploded on itself.
It was a revolt basically by the people who lived under communism that defeated it in Eastern Europe, topped off by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
But Communism is not defeated. It exists to this day on your doorstep, America, in Cuba, which has caused you no end of political grief. And of course it continues in North Korea. So no, Communism has not been defeated, and certainly, America hasn't defeated it, or Cuba would have been a Democracy ages ago.
I, the TruthSeeker, have had to make these points clear here, because I know that few others will. CBS News didn't in reporting the comments in Friday's Campaign Notebook. Fox News certainly will not, because they support Mr Giuliani.
I hope Keith Olbermann will, on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann. There's too much spin in the media these days. It's time someone started telling the truth. So far, that person is me.
