The Right State

Sometimes I wonder how liberals can sleep at night with Bush and company still at the controls of government.  Everything the President does has a hidden agenda.  His every action is to shore up the base.  The left leaning New York Times is no different.  In discussing a proven policy which combats terrorism, which in hearing after hearing has met legal challenges, the Times writes an article with the presumption of a cover-up.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday that President Bush personally blocked Justice Department lawyers from pursuing an internal probe of the warrantless eavesdropping program that monitors Americans’ international calls and e-mails when terrorism is suspected.  (emphasis added by TRS)

Monitoring telephone calls and e-mails to terrorists is a bad thing?  They do not even mention the number of terrorists has caught or the number of plots thwarted by this program.  What is important is that the Times can once again try to disparage the President when he is actively performing his job of protecting the American people.

What the NYT did not include in the story was the rest of Alberto Gonzales’ speech.

Gonzales reiterated the president’s recent pledge to submit the National Security Agency program to review by a secret court as long as Congress passes a new law that satisfies the White House’s demands.

“At the end of the day, we will have a decision by the court saying what the president is doing is, in fact, constitutional,” Gonzales said in his second appearance before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee here since the secret surveillance came to light.

The old Gray Lady also notes that Arlen Specter was one of those who originally questioned the legality of warrantless wiretapping.  But there is another side the left is not reporting.  The Senator has proposed legislation which would in fact give President Bush the power to conduct these wiretapping.  Senator Specter correctly notes the President has wartime powers Congress should not and can not interfere with.

Specter attempted to downplay the criticism of his compromise proposal and concessions to the president. Whatever bill the Congress may pass, he said, it can’t override the president’s wartime powers under the Constitution.

There are times I really like Arlen Specter, and there are times when I absolutely detest him.  This is one of those times I like him.  He notes what the left in this country has either forgotten or refuses to admit, we are at war with terrorism.

Tools like warrantless wiretapping are an effective tool in finding and eliminating terrorists.  But as we have seen in the past, the New York Times is more interested in bringing down a president than protecting this country from future attacks.

Tags: President Bush, Bias, Politics, War by Chuck
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How do you define Israel’s war against Hezbollah?  Some define it as part of the larger war on terror?  Others see it a separate and distinct, the continuation of a long struggle against the state of Israel.  Either way, the nation of Israel is fighting for its existence while Hezbollah’s single minded purpose seems to be the destruction of same.  But considering the group bombed the American Embassy in Beirut in April of 1983 which killed about 60 Americans, followed by the bombing of the Marine Barracks in 1983 which killed 241 Marines, their mission seems to include killing all “infidels.”

For the last several years, President Bush has gone out of his way to say the west is not in a war against Islam.  Is he right?  Father Jonathan, a regular blogger for Fox News, says the current battle between Israel and Hezbollah is a religious war.

At the heart of the issue is supposedly religion. Religion, however, is man’s humble response to God who calls, and God calls nobody to kill the innocent. Hezbollah, on its own admission, thrives on radical Islamic ideology. They claim to be doing the will of Allah by ridding the region of Zionist infidels.

Where do these militants learn their religion? Who tells them what God wants them to do, why he wants them to die for such a cause?

They listen to those who support them and who teach them the Koran. Hezbollah depends on the Islamic regimes of Iran and Syria for both material and ideological sustenance. Just as their weapons are not their own, nor are their ideas.

I am reminded of the history of the Catholic Church before Johan Gutenberg’s invention of the removable type printing press.   Since most people did not own a bible of their own, priests would tell the population what he thought it meant.  There was nothing particularly wrong with this except for a few priest, bishops or popes who decided to go off on their own and give directives not in the bible.  Today we have Islamic religious leaders who are counting on the ignorance of their followers to make directives not mentioned in the Koran.  How else could the idea of 72 virgins come into play?  Pure fantasy.

Many things are done in the name of God, some good, and some bad.  There are people who blow-up abortion clinics in the name of God.  There are also some good people who open a foster home in the name of God.  There are good people and there are bad people, good and evil, right and wrong.  Religion merely gives the act a label, or in the case of some, a reason for their existence.  Or in the case of radical Islam, a reason for committing terrorist acts.

Not everything we do in the name of God honors him. Islam, Judaism, and Christianity are the three major, monotheistic religions. According to their sacred texts, they believe in one God, the creator of all things. Is the loving God of Genesis the same God who sends militants to kill the innocent in Iraq, Jordan, Indonesia, Israel, London, Madrid, and NYC? The question is a bad one because no god does that. Belief doesn’t determine being; it’s the other way around. Real faith depends on a truth that exists outside of us. It is adherence to a God who perfects us. The rest is a figment of someone’s imagination.

Wow!  A loving God does not send people to kill innocents, but evil religious can and obviously do.

I really enjoyed Father Jonathon’s blog describing this religious war until he reached the point of who started this war between Israel and Hezbollah.  At this point he really dropped the ball.  There can not be any equivocating here.  There is a difference between terrorist acts and responding to terrorist acts.  Both sides are not equally culpable.  If this IS a religious war, and I believe it is, then Hezbollah is trying to eradicate Judaism, Christianity, and all others.

To be fair Father Jonathon does go on to say Israel needs protection, Lebanon needs to expand its control over its southern region, Syria needs to butt out, and Israel needs to stop responding tit for tat.  Israel has been begging for help for years, but no one was listening.  The only time anyone does listen is when the IDF responds and responds aggressively.  This is no time for any vacillating on the issues.  Israel, like the United States, is caught in this deadly game of terrorism.  This is a religious war and Islam has declared war on all religions except radical Islam.  Its time for other countries to stand with the US and Israel, or move out of the way.

Tags: President Bush, War by Chuck
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