September 2, 2004

Zell The Truth

God Bless Sen. Zell Miller for telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about John Kerry's absolutely awful Senate record on issues of national defense and national security. Miller - a former Marine, a former Georgia legislator and governor, a former college professor, an author and husband, father and grandfather - is no Republican attack dog attacking from the other side of partisan lines. He's a member of the Senate and a member of Kerry's party - in other words, he served with Kerry on Kerry's political boat - and last night he told America the truth:

Your family's future depends on having the right commander in chief. John Kerry's record disqualifies him to be commander in chief.

Matt Margolis, blogging from the Republican National Convention, has a very good commentary on Zell's terrific speech. You should read the whole speech if you didn't have the chance to watch it on teevee last night. I've blogged a portion of it here with is a very strong indictment of today's Democratic Party and how it has put partisanship above national security. Miller reaches back to 1940, when America and the world faced the gathering danger of Nazi Germany, and recalled how another man running for president that year put national security ahead of his own personal political gain.

In the summer of 1940, I was an 8-year-old boy living in a remote little Appalachian valley. Our country was not yet at war, but even we children knew that there were some crazy men across the ocean who would kill us if they could.

President Roosevelt, in a speech that summer, told America, "All private plans, all private lives, have been in a sense repealed by an overriding public danger."

In 1940, Wendell Wilkie was the Republican nominee. And there is no better example of someone repealing their "private plans" than this good man.

He gave Roosevelt the critical support he needed for a peacetime draft, an unpopular idea at the time.

And he made it clear that he would rather lose the election than make national security a partisan campaign issue.

Shortly before Wilkie died, he told a friend that if he could write his own epitaph and had to choose between "here lies a president" or "here lies one who contributed to saving freedom," he would prefer the latter.

Where are such statesmen today? Where is the bipartisanship in this country when we need it most?

Today, at the same time young Americans are dying in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the Democrats' manic obsession to bring down our commander in chief.

What has happened to the party I've spent my life working in? I can remember when Democrats believed that it was the duty of America to fight for freedom over tyranny. It was Democratic President Harry Truman who pushed the Red Army out of Iran, who came to the aid of Greece when Communists threatened to overthrow it, who stared down the Soviet blockade of West Berlin by flying in supplies and saving the city.

Time after time in our history, in the face of great danger, Democrats and Republicans worked together to ensure that freedom would not falter.

But not today.

Motivated more by partisan politics than by national security, today's Democratic leaders see America as an occupier, not a liberator.

And nothing makes this Marine madder than someone calling American troops occupiers rather than liberators.

Tell that to the one-half of Europe that was freed because Franklin Roosevelt led an army of liberators, not occupiers.

Tell that to the lower half of the Korean Peninsula that is free because Dwight Eisenhower commanded an army of liberators, not occupiers.

Tell that to the half a billion men, women and children who are free today from the Poland to Siberia, because Ronald Reagan rebuilt a military of liberators, not occupiers.

Never in the history of the world has any soldier sacrificed more for the freedom and liberty of total strangers than the American soldier.

And, our soldiers don't just give freedom abroad, they preserve it for us here at home.

For it has been said so truthfully that it is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press.

It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech.

It is the soldier, not the agitator, who has given us the freedom to protest.

It is the soldier who salutes the flag, serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag, who gives that protester the freedom he abuses to burn that flag.

No one should dare to even think about being the commander in chief of this country if he doesn't believe with all his heart that our soldiers are liberators abroad and defenders of freedom at home.

But don't waste your breath telling that to the leaders of my party today. In their warped way of thinking, America is the problem, not the solution. They don't believe there is any real danger in the world except that which America brings upon itself through our clumsy and misguided foreign policy.

It is not their patriotism, it is their judgment that has been so sorely lacking.

Zell Miller exposed the real John Kerry record last night - the record Kerry is running from instead of running on. Kerry isn't running on his 20-year Senate record because he knows he can't win on it. A 20-year record of voting for weakness at home and appeasement abroad is attractive only to those who don't understand we're at war. A Neville Chamberlain can't win when voters are looking for someone with the spine of Churchill.

UPDATE: More blog coverage here.