Summer Soldiers and Sunshine Patriots

By Raoul Lowery Contreras/HispanicVista.com
 

“Casualties many…Percentage dead unknown…Combat efficiency: We are winning!”

A bleeding Colonel David M. Shoup sent this message from the beach at Tarawa, a sand spit in the Pacific Ocean that was defended by 5000 fanatical Japanese, of which 4,987 were killed by Marines over four days (November 20-23, 1943). 837 Marines were killed, over 2200 wounded.

Newspapers in the United States were shocked by hundreds of dead Marines and loudly screamed about this bloodiest day in Marine Corps history. They screamed because they instinctively knew something went terribly wrong in the invasion.

President Roosevelt’s Admirals had: Not realized that record low tides would force Marines to wade up to three hundred yards in waist deep water towards the beach under fire from the Japanese. Naval intelligence had failed. Those Japanese were mostly unhurt by the Navy that did not use armor-piercing shells in fortress Tarawa’s bombardment. Lastly, the Navy never used 2000 pound killer bombs like planned, leading up to the Marine landing.  The Navy stopped all bombing 20 minutes early, allowing the Japanese to gather their wits about them before the Marines landed. 837 Marines died; another 2200 were wounded.

Tarawa and its beaches was soaked red with Marine blood. That was not their fault.  Roosevelt Admirals were as much to blame as the Japanese were. Nonetheless, Republicans didn’t hit the streets, camp outside the White House, hit the talk shows with criticism of President Roosevelt. They didn’t do so after the greatest intelligence failure in American history, Pearl Harbor and its thousands of dead Americans.

Republicans didn’t attack the President 24/7 for the huge loss of life due to mistakes and intelligence blunders by Roosevelt’s admirals. Nor did they strike when he squandered thousands of lives in a foolish and unnecessary invasion of Italy. Nor did they rise in revolt when over a thousand Marines were slaughtered in another foolish attempt by Roosevelt Admirals to look better than General Douglas MacArthur in the unnecessary invasion of Peleilu Island.

The only people who were actively working against American interests during Roosevelt’s war years were the Communist Party USA and its hidden agents throughout the government that lived only to further the interests of world communism and its butcher Joseph Stalin.

Fellow travelers of theirs are in Congress: Democrat Representatives Charlie Rangel, Nancy Pelosi, John Murtha, and Democrat Senators Harry Reid, Carl Levin, Jay Rockefeller, Joseph Biden and one Republican, Chuck Hagel. Direct descendents of Stalinists on the street: Cindi Sheehan, Fernando Suarez de Solar, and lots of A.N.S.W.E.R. communist groups and people.

On the street, almost all protests and demonstrations are coordinated by A.N.S.W.E.R. and its affiliates such as the ones who object to the World Trade Organization and arrangements like NAFTA and CAFTA or even the existence of Wal-Mart stores. These groups have American labor union, Socialist and Communist roots. In the case of some, like Cindi Sheehan, anti-Semitic roots also show through her now forgotten rants on the War in Iraq.

On the airwaves, we hear Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean, unfit to serve in the Vietnam Era military, declare that the war that has cost 1600 American combat deaths in Iraq (plus 400 non-combat deaths) is “UN-WINNABLE” just days before Iraqis vote for the third time this year.

Dean’s “UN-WINNABLE” comments also came days before the History Channel broadcast a re-enactment of last year’s Battle of Ramadi. There, fewer than 50 U.S. Marines successfully fought against hundreds of Sunni Muslim insurgents and led to a secure Ramadi where thousands upon thousands of Iraqis went to the polls in this election.

The “mainstream” anti-war, anti-Bush media assaults us with allegations and reporting that George W. Bush personally created American anti-war demonstrators by invading Iraq. Dan Rather, for example, still thinks his Bush National Guard story is true, despite being fired from CBS for reporting a false story using false documents.  

The mainstream media reports that little is going right in Iraq, that Americans are dying for nothing and that Iraqis hate the United States and its “occupation” of Iraq.  Democratic Congressman John Murtha relishes provably false media conclusions by quoting false “survey” results.  His view change from original support of the war has electrified the anti-war cabal of the media, Democrat leaders and the ultra-left MoveOn.org.

The President claims otherwise, as does any objective visitor to Iraq and, of course, the Iraqis themselves.  With an eye towards 2006 congressional elections, Bush critics continue to ramp up their attacks on the President and the War, despite objective facts and truth.  This is not the first time this has happened in America.

Tom Paine, the great Revolutionary War leader, faced the same type of people in his day – Tories -- that argued against the Revolt against England and opposed Independence from the monarchy.

Leading American intellectual Norman Podhoretz writes in the Wall Street Journal: “Tom Paine grew so disgusted with…the shrinking from hardship of the summer soldiers and the sunshine patriots of 1776-77 that he finally gave up trying to persuade them:

(Paine) I have been tender in raising the cry against these men, and used numberless arguments to show them their danger, but it will not do to sacrifice a world to either their folly or their baseness.”

This writer is also fatigued and bored by “summer soldiers and sunshine patriots.”  So are millions of Iraqis. 

Count the Iraqis who wrapped themselves in Iraqi flags as they voted. Count the Iraqi voters, millions of them. See how only 14 or so insurgent attacks took place in the entire country during voting. Count the purple fingers proudly displayed by Iraqi voters as they left crowded voting places. Notice that voting was so heavy in places that the voting hours were extended.

It is no accident that for the third time this year, millions of Iraqis voted to construct a permanent government in a political and governmental infrastructure that doesn’t exist in any Middle Eastern Muslim controlled state.  It is no secret that it was Iraqi security, 200,000 strong, that protected the polls successfully with Americans almost invisible. It is no accident that Sunni Arabs voted in large numbers in contrast to the previous elections they ignored. It is no accident that over 100 independent newspapers, radio and television stations have flourished in Iraq where none existed before Americans invaded.

In a smashing historical event Iraqis voted for a colossal step towards a free and democratic country.  President Bush wins.  The American soldiers, sailors and Marines who have died in Iraq won. The American people win. Freedom won.

December 15^th, Election Day…the “summer soldiers and sunshine patriots” whimper as they lost the historically mega-important election, perhaps the most important election ever held outside the United States.

The historical losers include Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi, Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, street protesters Cindi Sheehan and Fernando Suarez de Solar, the communist A.N.S.W.E.R. thugs and Democratic Congressman John Murtha.

They lost by millions of votes cast by free Iraqi men and women. Or, as one Muslim Septuagenarian Iraqi female voter told American reporters: “Thanks for President Bush; you against President Bush, you go to hell!”

Contreras’s newest book—THE ILLEGAL ALIEN: A DAGGER INTO THE HEART OF AMERICA published by Floricanto Press is available and reviewed at www.amazon.com and www.barnesandnoble.com