We are on the precipice of another revolutionary upheaval in America. Forty years ago, the United States found itself involved in a conflict it didn’t really want to fight in Viet Nam. The evening news bombarded Americans at the dinner table with televised footage of our embattled young men being bloodied and battered by the enemy. The daily ritual of showing our young men coming home in coffins at an ever increasingly alarming rate as the 1960’s wore on became too much for Americans, thus Viet Nam created a new movement in America that decried bloodshed, for any reason, and declared that making love and not war was the answer.

Lost in the television and print media, who took their cue from TV, coverage was the fact that in Viet Nam, the United States never lost a major battle. I’m sure this is news for some reading this column because, ever since the fall of Saigon to the communist North Vietnamese, the media has portrayed Viet Nam as an American defeat, which is absolutely not true. But nor was it a victory either. For America, the war in Viet Nam officially ended in 1973 when we signed a cease-fire truce with North Vietnam.

Less than two years later, when the North Vietnamese broke the truce and invaded South Vietnam, the United States Government, reeling from a weakened presidency in the aftermath of Watergate and controlled by a Democratic Congress that was war weary, refused to fund the South Vietnamese Government in order to defend themselves from the communist siege. Viet Nam became a united communist country in 1975.

Forty years later, once more America is fighting a war it doesn’t want to fight and once again, Americans are being bombarded with news footage of our soldiers bloodied and battered and of the turmoil and unrest in a foreign country that Americans have decided is irrelevant to them. Once more, despite the fact that there is no possible way for the insurgent terrorist armies to militarily defeat the armed forces of the United States, the enemy insurgents are relying on Western media to disunite America, as they did with their Viet Nam reporting, in order to defeat our military. Like his predecessor, Lyndon B. Johnson, George Bush’s presidency is becoming increasingly obsolete. Once more, emboldened activists for “peace” are heralding the trumpet of retreat for U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And as the activists become louder and garner more attention and support from Americans though the media, the beginnings of a revolution storm is brewing. The war in Iraq is taking its toll on America by distracting the president, his cabinet members, as well as the Congress from pressing issues that demand attention now, whether it is the unmitigated influx of third world illegal immigration or the development of nuclear weapons in North Korea and Iran, countries with unstable and dangerous leadership.

It is now too late and the die has been cast. After this Fall’s congressional and state elections, and regardless of who controls the Congress, the next five years in America will be one of upheaval, disunity and chaos. The 2008 presidential election will be the most fiercely fought election since 1968. It will be coarse and brutal, spilling out into the streets as various groups, who no longer view themselves as Americans first, will finally feel secure in their numbers and change the direction of the country much as the activists of forty years ago did.

The force of the coming implosion will only be mitigated by world events outside of our realm. Those coming events will hurt American citizenry and once more force us to look within ourselves, just as our forefathers have done, for the fortitude and strength needed to sustain our fragile democracy. That the answer is not one of certainty, because our forefathers have either been forgotten or are not respected and even despised by some groups who will never consider themselves to be Americans first, is a frightening prospect to those citizens who call America home.

by
Richard L. Barrett, III

In light of the recent death of murderous psychopath, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (Allah be praised!) and Michael Berg’s statement upon hearing the news that the man who beheaded his son, Nicholas Berg, said, "I don't think that Zarqawi is himself responsible for the killings of hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq, I think George Bush is.” I had to go back and review Mr. Berg, who is a Greenpeace candidate running for Congress in the coming fall election, and his open letter regarding the death of his son.

Below is his letter with my own running commentary about his accusations in bold black.

George Bush never looked into Nick's eyes

By Michael Berg

Even more than the murderers who took my son's life, I condemn those who make policies to end lives

Even more than the murderers who took your son’s life, I condemn those who are left-wing apologists for Islamofacisism.

My son, Nick, was my teacher and my hero. He was the kindest, gentlest man I know; no, the kindest, gentlest human being I have ever known. He quit the Boy Scouts of America because they wanted to teach him to fire a handgun. Nick, too, poured into me the strength I needed, and still need, to tell the world about him.

People ask me why I focus on putting the blame for my son's tragic and atrocious end on the Bush administration. They ask: "Don't you blame the five men who killed him?" I have answered that I blame them no more or less than the Bush administration, but I am wrong: I am sure, knowing my son, that somewhere during their association with him these men became aware of what an extraordinary man my son was. I take comfort that when they did the awful thing they did, they weren't quite as in to it as they might have been. I am sure that they came to admire him.

I am sure that the one who wielded the knife felt Nick's breath on his hand and knew that he had a real human being there. I am sure that the others looked into my son's eyes and got at least a glimmer of what the rest of the world sees. And I am sure that these murderers, for just a brief moment, did not like what they were doing.

Wrong assumption. The men who killed your son were psychopaths who are detached from human feeling and emotion. They kill innocent women and children and behead peacekeepers and foreign workers trying to make Iraq a civilized country where, under Saddam Hussein, they knew only brutality and fear. They looked into your son’s eyes and shouted “God is great! All glory to God!” They enjoyed killing your son, Mr. Berg.

George Bush never looked into my son's eyes. George Bush doesn't know my son, and he is the worse for it. George Bush, though a father himself, cannot feel my pain, or that of my family, or of the world that grieves for Nick, because he is a policymaker, and he doesn't have to bear the consequences of his acts. George Bush can see neither the heart of Nick nor that of the American people, let alone that of the Iraqi people his policies are killing daily.

Donald Rumsfeld said that he took responsibility for the sexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners. How could he take that responsibility when there was no consequence? Nick took the consequences.

Even more than those murderers who took my son's life, I can't stand those who sit and make policies to end lives and break the lives of the still living.

Once more the liberal disconnect. Mr. Berg conveniently forgets the reign of terror Saddam Hussein not only injected into his citizens, but also the entire region (Invaded Iraq and Kuwait, launched missiles at Israel and paid the families of Palestinian Homicide bombers.)

Nick was not in the military, but he had the discipline and dedication of a soldier. Nick Berg was in Iraq to help the people without any expectation of personal gain. He was only one man, but through his death he has become many. The truly unselfish spirit of giving your all to do what you know in your own heart is right even when you know it may be dangerous; this spirit has spread among the people who knew Nick, and that group has spread and is spreading all over the world.

So what were we to do when we in America were attacked on September 11, that infamous day? I say we should have done then what we never did before: stop speaking to the people we labeled our enemies and start listening to them. Stop giving preconditions to our peaceful coexistence on this small planet, and start honouring and respecting every human's need to live free and autonomously, to truly respect the sovereignty of every state. To stop making up rules by which others must live and then separate rules for ourselves.

Once again, we get liberal disconnect propaganda from Mr. Berg. Listen to our enemies, Mr. Berg? Listen to those who tried to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993? Listen to those who brought them down in 2001? Listen to those who blew up the USS Cole, who bombed our soldiers in Beirut and in a German disco? Who blow themselves up in order to kill civilians in Israel, Madrid and London? Who regularly preach in their mosques the destruction of Israel, America and the West because we are all infidels? Who do you suggest we listen to, Mr. Berg? You cannot give respect to those who do not respect you! You, and your left-wing comrades, live in a fantasy world of Utopia.

George Bush's ineffective leadership is a weapon of mass destruction, and it has allowed a chain reaction of events that led to the unlawful detention of my son which immersed him in a world of escalated violence. Were it not for Nick's detention, I would have had him in my arms again. That detention held him in Iraq not only until the atrocities that led to the siege of Fallujah, but also the revelation of the atrocities committed in the jails in Iraq, in retaliation for which my son's wonderful life was put to an end.

Actually, Mr. Berg, your son would still be alive today if you had not taught him your false doctrines of left wing activism/utopianism. I am willing to bet that this is the real reason for your cause of grief, that it was actually your teachings that killed your son. Take responsibility for your actions, sir!

My son's work still goes on. Where there was one peacemaker before, I now see and have heard from thousands of peacemakers. Nick was a man who acted on his beliefs. We, the people of this world, now need to act on our beliefs. We need to let the evildoers on both sides of the Atlantic know that we are fed up with war. We are fed up with the killing and bombing and maiming of innocent people. We are fed up with the lies. Yes, we are fed up with the suicide bombers, and with the failure of the Israelis and Palestinians to find a way to stop killing each other. We are fed up with negotiations and peace conferences that are entered into on both sides with preset conditions that preclude the outcome of peace. We want world peace now.

Many have offered to pray for Nick and my family. I appreciate their thoughts, but I ask them to include in their prayers a prayer for peace. And I ask them to do more than pray. I ask them to demand peace now.

Amen!