Back on December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbor, an attack that left 2380 dead (including 68 civilians), and 1178 injured. Nine ships of the U.S. fleet were sunk and 21 ships were severely damaged in a sneak attack that brought the United States into World War II.

Never forget!

rochesterconservative.com was well represented this past Saturday at the 9/11/2010 Ground Zero Mosque Protest by RC co-founder, Freedom Fighter, and here’s a presentation of her photos that she took while there. She was right up front and reported:

I do know there were more than 2000 at our rally. We were packed in like sardines. I couldn’t even move my feet! The people went back for at least two blocks.

It doesn’t even matter what the media reported anyway. All you have to do is look at the photos. They’re never going to report fairly.

I waited three hours at the front line. I’m so glad I did!! All the speakers were great but Geert was the most meaningful because of what he’s going through himself. He mentioned the words to the song “Have you Forgotten”. I love that song!

Every few minutes there were chants of “No Mosque Here!”. It was great!

The “Geert” that Freedom Fighter speaks of is Geert Wilders. I posted his video, Fitna, here on rochesterconservative.com back on March 29th, 2008, after it was just released.

Speaking of Geert Wilders, here’s a few of photos of him!

Atlas Shrugged blogger, Pamela Geller, introducing Geert Wilders:

More photos of Geert Wilders speaking at the GZM protest:

Freedom Fighter reported that there were many other great speakers at the rally. Here’s some photos of them.

Robert Spencer, the owner of Jihadwatch.org.

The guy next to me was from Philly. Another guy was from Alabama. I met a couple from Florida. There was a Cuban immigrant behind me. They were from everywhere. It’s resonating and I hear Imam Rauf is reconsidering or something like that.

Here’s a photo of some guys who flew over from England. They’re members of the English Defence League (EDL). They’ve been going at it with the Muslims in England who spat on returning soldiers there. The media there makes them out to be members of the KKK but it’s not true. Look them up on Youtube to see some of their videos.

Here’s some candid crowd shots the Freedom Fighter caught, showing that there were many different nationalities participating in the GZM protest..

BTW, the most telling contrast of photo’s of the day were the following.

Here’s a photo of the GZM protest rally:

and here’s a photo of the pro GZM supporters:
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No Ground Zero Mosque!

RV

We must never forget the 9/11 attacks and the ideology that was responsible for them!

NY Governor David Paterson came up with a good idea to diffuse the controversy that surrounds the proposed Cordoba Initiative Mosque, that will be built 600 feet from Ground Zero. From NY1:

“I don’t have any objection to it being built there, but I’m very sensitive to the desire of those who are adamant against it to see something else worked out,” said the governor. “And frankly, if the sponsors who are looking for property anywhere at a distance that would beseech that, it would accommodate a better feeling among the people who are frustrated, I would look into trying to provide them with the state property they would need.”

I’ve got to give Paterson credit for coming up with this alternative idea! In my opinion, the Cordoba Initiative should take up Paterson on his offer. That will prove that their intentions are truly about understanding and outreach.

But there’s already resistance to Paterson’s offer from the supporters of the Mosque:

One prominent mosque supporter rejected the governor’s trial balloon, saying Paterson’s remarks validate the idea that all Muslims are responsible for what terrorists did on September 11th.

It’s interesting that NY1 does not identify this “prominent mosque supporter”. What are they trying to hide?

In my mind, if the Cordoba Initiative rejects this offer from Paterson, it proves that their intentions are not about understanding and outreach, but of “in our face” symbolism, a monument of radical Islam’s greatest victory over Western Civilization, right next to hallowed Ground Zero.

The ball is in the Cordoba Initiative’s court.

A fair warning, this post is a rant about the barbaric and ignorant Taliban who murdered the 10 medical missionaries in northeastern Afghanistan. From npr.org:

the bodies of 10 members of a medical team – six Americans, two Afghans, one German and a Briton – were flown to Kabul from the northern province of Badakhshan, where they were gunned down three days ago at the end of a humanitarian mission. The Taliban claimed responsibility and accused the group of spying and seeking to convert Muslims to Christianity.

The Taliban animals butchered doctors and nurses who were providing needed medical care to the people of Afghanistan! They were also Christians and for that they were robbed and shot, one by one.

I had an interesting conversation with my niece’s boyfriend, who served three tours of duty in Iraq. He doesn’t think that the situation in Iraq or Afghanistan can ever be totally stabilized due to tribal in fighting.

With incidents such as the murders of the medical missionaries and the mounting death toll of US troops and those of our allies, I’ve come to change my stance about us staying there until the situation is stabilized. At this point, I doubt it will ever be stabilized in a “Western manner” as a good portion of the people are incapable of ruling themselves and are too divided by religious and tribal loyalties to ever be able to cooperate in a civilized manner.

It’s time for us to pull our troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq and leave them with a warning that if terrorists originating from those countries attack the US or US interests, we’ll go medieval on them with nukes.

I haven’t posted about the proposed mosque that the Cordoba Initiative is planning to build near Ground Zero in New York City. I chose to post about it today because the final hurdle for approval for building it was cleared when the Landmarks Preservation Commission denied landmark status for the building that’s currently on the site.

As with any religion in the US, Muslims have a right to build their places of worship. With that said, it’s incredibly insensitive for the Cordoba Initiative to build the Mosque so close to Ground Zero. The 9/11 attack was committed in the name of Islam. Anyone who has a clue understands the motivation behind this giant (proposed 13 story) mosque. It’s Islam thumbing its nose at America and Western Civilization and as Dan Senor wrote in the Wall Street Journal:

Those attacks, as you well know, were committed in the name of Islam. We applaud and thank every Muslim throughout the world who has rejected and denounced this association. But the fact remains that in the minds of many who are swayed by the most radical interpretations of Islam, the Cordoba House will not be seen as a center for peace and reconciliation. It will rather be celebrated as a Muslim monument erected on the site of a great Muslim “military” victory—a milestone on the path to the further spread of Islam throughout the world.

Even Daisy Khan, wife of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf who’s leading up the Cordoba Initiative has stated:

there is a “divine hand” in the Ground Zero mosque project: “the building came to us”…it “will be symbolic”

How does the Cordoba Initiative plan on funding this $100 million project? From the New York Post:

At first, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf insisted the funds would be raised entirely from the Muslim-American community.

But then he told an Arabic-language newspaper in Britain that funding would also come from Arab countries.

And it should be noted that Rauf’s father was the long-time director of the Islamic Center of New York, which built the mosque on Third Avenue and 96th Street — a project funded primarily by the governments of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and other Muslim nations.

Now, the Saudis openly fund mosques abroad, spreading the radical Wahhabi strain of Islam, as a means of pacifying their own home-grown radicals.

So it would be particularly troubling if Rauf’s funding comes from abroad — particularly from Riyadh.

Again, it’s pretty obvious what the motivations are behind the mosque near Ground Zero. Many people are against the building of it, including most of the families of the 9/11 victims. The question I pose is, how do we stop it from being built?

Continuing today on the subject of Journolist, one of the people targeted was Fred Barnes who is the executive editor of the Weekly Standard and a commentator on Fox News Channel. From theDaily Caller:

In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”

Here’s Barnes’ take on the Journolist issue and the liberal biased MSM in general. From the Wall Street Journal:

My response has usually been to say, yes, there’s liberal bias in the media, but there’s no conspiracy. The liberal tilt is an accident of nature. The media disproportionately attracts people from a liberal arts background who tend, quite innocently, to be politically liberal. If they came from West Point or engineering school, this wouldn’t be the case.

Now, after learning I’d been targeted for a smear attack by a member of an online clique of liberal journalists, I’m inclined to amend my response. Not to say there’s a media conspiracy, but at least to note that hundreds of journalists have gotten together, on an online listserv called JournoList, to promote liberalism and liberal politicians at the expense of traditional journalism.

My guess is that this and other revelations about JournoList will deepen the distrust of the national press. True, participants in the online clubhouse appear to hail chiefly from the media’s self-identified left wing. But its founder, Ezra Klein, is a prominent writer for the Washington Post. Mr. Klein shut down JournoList last month—a wise decision.

We here at rochesterconservative.com know of this liberal bias first hand because as pioneers of the Tea Party Movement, we’ve been targeted by it in a seemingly organized fashion that seems like those journalists colluded with each other.

Fred Barnes brought up a good point, that the members of Journolist promoted “liberalism and liberal politicians at the expense of traditional journalism”. IMO, most of the MSM has voluntarily acted as the propaganda arm for Obama’s campaign in 2008 and for him and his administration after they helped him win the election.

This sort of collusion of the MSM actively promoting and covering for political candidates and elected officials brings to mind Rep. A. S. Herlong, JR. of Florida reading of the Communist Goals on the House Floor on January 10 1963. Two of those goals concern the MSM:

20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.

21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.

We’re there right now. This is exactly what got Obama elected, a complicit MSM. Far left ideologues have infiltrated the MSM and are voluntarily pushing this agenda and promoting politicians who are also believes in this world socialist (aka communist) revolution. Our country is being pushed away from being a Constitutional Republic towards a European style socialist democracy. We all know what the evils of government run socialism can bring, over 100 million deaths of innocent civilians during the 20th Century. I cannot understand why these supposedly educated people in the MSM would actively work to push our country in this direction. Utopia is unattainable and ends up being deadly for those living in countries trying to attain it.

Ed Offley is a writer for several websites, notably Soldiers For The Truth, a site he helped found with Col. David Hackworth, plus he’s done work for Stars&Stripes and other forms of print media. When I first read this, it reminded me of a quote from Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence:

—And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

Although written several years ago, the issues and themes contained within the following carry on through to today. We find ourselves in a culture war at home, while many of our nation’s best and bravest fight in the hills, mountains, and hinterlands of Afghanistan, and keep the peace in Iraq. We face real, determined enemies of freedom abroad, and we’ve come to realize we have our own struggle here at home.

Enjoy Independence Day weekend, and the prose of Ed Offley, who is descended from the main character in this account.

From Landed Gentry to an Unmarked Grave

By Ed Offley

He was born in 1738 into the land-owning gentry of planters and traders who dominated colonial Virginia’s rural economy and political system. Yet Thomas Nelson Jr. of Yorktown would die 51 years later so deeply in debt that his sons were forced to bury him secretly in an unmarked grave so that his creditors could not seize his remains as collateral for their unpaid loans.

It was no mere crop failure, business collapse or natural disaster that brought Nelson down. It was his conscious decision that American freedom was more important than his own personal gain.

Confronted by an intolerable system of British imperial edicts that American colonists perceived as a political and economic tyranny that threatened their very existence as a people, Nelson was typical of the small group of leaders who gambled their lives, pocketbooks and futures to win American independence and set the young nation on its course to become the modern United States.

As the nation observes the July 4 holiday this year, a serious debate has emerged over the current all-volunteer military. With our troops still locked in a vicious and protracted counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq, and a lesser but still dangerous mission in Afghanistan, a number of pundits and critics of the war are beginning to suggest that only the economically disadvantaged are signing up for military service. The sons and daughters of the elites, critics say, support the war only if someone else’s child is sent to fight it.

It is appropriate this week to remember that this is not the first time we as a nation have been confronted by hard choices between freedom and security, and between self-interest and the national welfare. And it is proper to point out that even in the vital struggle for American independence, the nation was roughly divided among supporters of the British crown, advocates of separation from the empire, and a third group indifferent to the war.

Still, the generation of Americans who came of age in the 1760s and 1770s faced a daunting challenge, as Thomas Nelson’s own experience attests.

The eldest son of a wealthy planter and trader whose family had turned Yorktown, Va., into the second-largest seaport in the Old Dominion, Nelson at the age of 14 was already earmarked by his family to carry on its legacy of leadership. He was sent to England for education at the elite Eton school, and later graduated from Cambridge University, returning to Virginia in 1761 at the age of 22.

Even while still aboard the sailing ship enroute to Yorktown, his family engineered his election from York County to the colonial House of Burgesses. The following year, he married Lucy Grymes, the daughter of another landed gentry, receiving from his father, William Nelson, the marriage gift of a landed estate. They would raise a family of 11 children. His plantations covered thousands of acres of lush farmland, and his personal wealth ranked him in the top handful of powerful families who directed the affairs of their colony under the suspicious eyes of the British royal governor in Williamsburg.

Like most colonists who later rose in rebellion against King George III, Nelson’s transition from gentry to rebel began with the infamous 1765 Stamp Act passed by Parliament in London that assigned a tax on every official document created in the colonies. (The colonists’ fury over the tax was that it was imposed by the British government with no input from the Americans it affected, sparking the slogan, “No taxation without representation.”)

Soon thereafter Nelson, like many other prominent colonists, joined the Virginia Convention (a precursor of the Continental Congress) and offered the first formal proposal to create an independent Virginia militia. This little-remembered legislative ploy is recognized by most historians as Virginia’s first major turning point away from compromise and toward outright revolution against the British Empire.

The following year, Nelson became one of Virginia’s seven delegates to the Continental Congress and signed the Declaration of Independence authored by his friend and fellow Virginian, Thomas Jefferson. As the history, The Centennial Book of the Signers , recounts, Nelson was proud to have signed because of his particular background:

“He admitted proudly that he was the only person out of nine or ten Virginians that were sent with him to England for education that had taken part in the American Revolution. All the rest were Tories.”

Many colonial-era Americans, even of high social status, failed to leave detailed personal histories, diaries or correspondence for future study, and Nelson was one of them. However, the physical and mental strains he suffered during the seven years of the American Revolution are well known to historians. In 1777, while continuing to serve in Congress in Philadelphia, Nelson was stricken “with a disease of the head, probably of a paralytic nature,” and was forced to return home and resign his seat.

When he recovered his health, Nelson in 1778 would receive a more important appointment: commander of the Virginia militia. In addition to leading the volunteer force in several engagements, Nelson himself advanced money to supply and arm his soldiers. When the Congress appealed to men of financial substance in the colonies to form troops of light cavalry, Nelson, at his own expense, raised and trained a unit.

But by early 1781, Virginia was in dire straits. Attacked several times by powerful British raiding parties led by turncoat Gen. Benedict Arnold, the colony was economically bankrupt and its leadership scattered in to the western foothills when then-Gov. Thomas Jefferson’s term came to an end. The legislature elected Nelson to succeed him on June 12, 1781. Within several days of his appointment, Nelson and the rest of the state government were forced to flee again, from Charlottesville to Staunton, when British Col. Banastre Tarleton led a surprise cavalry raid deep into Virginia seeking to capture them and decapitate Virginia’s leadership.

But the tide was about to turn, and Nelson would play a major role. A combined Franco-American army consisting of French troops under the Compte de Rochambeau and Gen. George Washington marched south from New York state into Virginia in an attempt to intercept Gen. Lord Cornwallis as his British force marched north from Charleston, S.C.

As commander of the Virginia Militia, about one-third of the American troops under Washington, Nelson marched down the Virginia Peninsula through deserted Williamsburg to join the siege of the British force at Yorktown, his home town and family seat.

He was a brigadier general commanding soldiers many of whom wore rags as uniforms and muskets paid out of his own dwindling fortune. The stress of simultaneously managing a bankrupt state government and organizing a final military blow against Cornwallis, apparently caused a relapse in his health. Historians note that Nelson vanished from sight for two weeks in the summer of 1781, presumably because of illness.

By September, Nelson was forced as governor to make emergency decrees for arming and provisioning his soldiers that exceeded the formal limits of his power, a step that would come back to haunt him later. But by the middle of that month, it scarcely mattered: He left Richmond for the last time and joined Washington, Rochambeau and the Marquis de Lafayette at the siege camp outside of Yorktown.

On Sept. 27, 1781, the allies with a combined force of 16,000 troops moved into position, digging trenches and laying artillery in a semi-circle around the town, and on Oct. 9, a combined artillery force of 52 cannons opened fire, forcing the 7,200 British and Hessian defenders to take to ground.

One of the more fascinating incidents in the Yorktown battle concerned a stately, two-story brick mansion that dominated the town skyline – then and now. When word came to Gen. Washington that Cornwallis had moved his headquarters into the house, Nelson reportedly recommended to his commanding general that the allies bring heavy artillery fire upon the new target. As one history recounted, the two men held a brief conversation:

“Whose house is that?” Washington asked.

“Sir, it is my house,” Nelson replied.

Ten days after the firing began, Cornwallis surrendered his army to the allies, and the Revolutionary War fighting came to an end (formally concluding with the Treaty of Paris nearly two years later in 1783).

Victory did not bring a return to prosperity and contentment to Nelson and his family. In fact, it brought economic ruin as the debts he had co-signed or sponsored to fit and feed the Virginia militia – including one personal note for $2 million – came due. To add insult to injury, Nelson’s political enemies in 1782 accused him as governor of impressing supplies for the revolutionary Army without constitutional authority. After an ailing Nelson personally pleaded that his acts were from “the necessities of war,” the legislature formally indemnified him of any liability. It also failed to compensate him for the personal fortune he had spent arming his men.

But in one of the few direct statements on record, Nelson later responded to a friend who asked if the effort had been worthwhile, “I would do it all over again.”

His health failing, Nelson and his family retired to a small family farm in central Virginia, where he died at the age of 51 on Jan. 4, 1789.

One of the few things that Nelson proudly kept in his later years was the memory of this praise from George Washington, his military commander at Yorktown:

“The General would be guilty of the highest ingratitude, a crime of which he hopes he shall never be accused, if he forgot to return his sincere acknowledgements to his Excellency, Governor Nelson, for the succors which he received from him, and the Militia under his command, to whose activity, emulation, and bravery, the highest praises are due.”

A physical reminder of Nelson’s dedication and sacrifice to win his nation freedom, can be seen today at his restored family home in Yorktown, where several cannon balls are still lodged in the brick exterior 224 years after the siege. Of course, the greater symbol of Nelson’s commitment rests in the National Archives in Washington, D.C., where the original Declaration of Independence carries his signature and that of 55 other men who pledged “their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor” for American freedom.

As was expected, Obama accepted General Stanley McChrystal’s resignation. In a surprising move, Obama appointed General David Petraeus to fill the position of Commander of the Afghanistan operation.

Flash back to September 2007, during the Senate confirmation hearings on the Surge in Iraq, when Obama beat up on the same General David Petraeus. Just as a reminder, here’s the video of it. Obama did not let General Petraeus get a word in edgewise!

“We have now set the bar so low that modest improvement in what was a completely chaotic situation’s considered success, but it’s not. This continues to be a disastrous foreign policy mistake.”

–Senator Barack Obama

If you recall, then Senator Joe Biden was also very critical of General Petraeus and his “surge” strategy.

“Well, what I, uhh, I saw heard and learned is a little bit what you heard, uhh, from the general just a moment ago. Uhh, there’s a big disconnect between, uhh, the truth of the matter and the reality. I mean the truth of the matter is that, uhhh, the America — this administration’s policy and the surge are a failure and that, uh, the surge, uh, which was supposed to stop sectarian violence, uh, long enough to get political reconciliation… There’s been no political reconciliation.”

and

“I expect him to say that. I think he’s dead, flat, wrong. The fact of the matter is is that, uh, this — this idea of these security gains we made have had no impact on the underlying sectarian dynamic. None! None whatsoever! Can anybody envision a central government made up of Sunni, Shi’a, and Kurds, that’s going to gain the trust and respect of 27 million Iraqis? It’s not going to happen.”

Both Obama and Biden tore General Petraeus a new one, proclaiming that the Surge was a failure and both of those clowns were wrong. Now they’re in charge and are turning to the very man that they so wrongly abused to save the Surge in Afghanistan. I can only hope that they let General Petreaus do his job in eliminating the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, just as he did in defeating the insurgency (and also Al Qaeda) in Iraq.