The real Kennedy heroes

[LongWire]

Good article from our neighbors up north, good assessment.


http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/14277


Teddy Kennedy "Character Challenged" brother in the utter extreme
The real Kennedy heroes


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By George Potts Thompson Monday, August 31, 2009
Jack Kennedy went to war in a dangerous area of the South Pacific (Guadalcanal), to serve as captain of an 80-Ft., plywood Patrol Torpedo Boat and almost got killed for his trouble.

His father was Ambassador to England so he could have obtained some cushy staff position at Pearl or in Australia. He didn’t, he volunteered for Combat. And went BACK to duty after being wounded & rescued from a remote Island behind enemy lines with most of his crew.
Heir Apparent Brother Joe, another Kennedy who DIDN’T have to Fight, was killed flying an experimental remote controlled B-24 full of Torpex high explosive. which blew up before he could bail out over the English Channel.
Both were therefore brave men, who served America with honor and valor in time of war. If memory serves me, even RFK served briefly in the navy before war’s end.
John Kennedy was an early advocate of Military Special Operations becoming the father of the Navy SEAL Teams. He visited Ft. Bragg to review Army SF & then authorized Army Special Forces to wear the then unofficial headgear… the Green Beret. It is STILL called “The JFK Center for Special Warfare.”
JFK was very pro-military, and was a supporter of Adm. Hyman Rickover’s Nuclear Navy. Yes he made mistakes (Bay of Pigs), but was not an appeaser of any stripe. Kennedy was Anti-Communist.
He cut Capital Gains Taxes, and he understood the importance of Small Business success. But Jack went against the grain often, and it made him scores of powerful enemies. That in itself bespoke of a man of courage.
Where and why the Kennedy family went off the far Left deep end has always been a puzzlement to me as Jack today would have ideologically been a Blue Dog. Reagan and Chuck Heston were once Democrats that changed party affiliation. Jack might have eventually as well.
On the campaign train back from McKeesport Pa after a debate, father Joe Sr. allegedly told Nixon: ” All Hell, Dick. if Jack wasn’t running you know I’d vote for you.”
Teddy on the other hand, sadly seemed to have been the “Character Challenged” brother in the utter extreme. Letting Mary Jo Kopechne suffocate in three feet of water after an alcohol induced motor vehicle accident while Teddy went looking for Defence Counsel wouldn’t have been an example in JFK’s book “Profiles in Courage.”
His Amnesty of Illegals in the late 80s was a monumental disaster… and he desired to do it yet again with McCain / Kennedy, the Dream Act, or whatever else he could foist upon us. He was on the wrong side of virtually EVERY national security issue during his entire, lengthy, tenure in the US Senate.
“Iraq is George Bush’s VIETNAAAM!!”
Last time I looked we prevailed there. If the Iraqis again descend into sectarian violence, that will be their doing, and not ours.
Why Senator Kennedy is being lauded as a “Lion” is quite baffling. Sir Winston Churchill was a “Lion.” Even Jack Kennedy might have qualified for the honorific had he survived. But Teddy?
All I saw was a rather wrongheaded, venal professional politician with a substance abuse problem coupled with serious character flaws, and a poor understanding of the free market who saw the threat of Soviet Russia as really no threat at all.
Kennedy appears to have been a good father to his children, but sadly again a poor husband to first wife Joan. His last marriage appears to have been a good one, and I feel badly for his family’s loss.
But to elevate him to some lofty status as “Lion of the Senate” appears to be The Liberal Left’s last grasp at the long foregone halcyon days of the “Camelot Dynasty” and little more. The Liberal Press seems to have kept attempting to elevate him to the level of his more noble brothers, John, Joe, and Robert, with little success.
It’s almost as if all the “good” Kennedy genes were all used when Ted came along.
Chris Matthews has now called President Obama “The Last Kennedy Brother”, so they are still attempting to channel Camelot into someone who is not even now a Kennedy family member.
Teddy simply did not possess the same virtues of public service that his older brothers did: Courage and commitment to things greater than their own aggrandizement. Joe and Jack did not shirk from lethal, risky combat, they VOLUNTEERED for it. Yes they were flawed people, as are we all. But they more than did their duty, and deserve credit for that.
Teddy appears to have been committed primarily to his own ambitions and the Socialist Special Interests which kept him in the Senate for all those decades.
There WERE really brave and noble men in the Kennedy Clan who selflessly fought and DIED for our country, and despite anyone’s political affiliation, that cannot be ignored simply because they were registered Democrats. The Party back then was not a Marxist construct as it has been since 1972.
But I’m not so sure the terms “brave or noble” can be apt descriptive terms applicable to the now late Senior Senator from Massachusetts. Ted Kennedy was more a “successful professional politician”.
Is that the type of self centered, self serving individual that we really desire to be governing our nation?


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George Potts Thompson can be reached at: letters@canadafreepress.com

[Chris Cram]

From http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/144810
Published: 06/07/11, 10:40 AM / Last Update: 06/07/11, 10:31 AM

On June 6, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy succumbed to gunshot wounds inflicted a day earlier by an Arab terrorist, Sirhan Sirhan. His daughter later said that this was because of his support for the Jewish state.
Lenny Ben-David, former head of AIPAC, writes in his blog that “Years later his daughter told me, ‘My father was killed by a Palestinian terrorist [Sirhan Sirhan] because of his strong support for Israel.’ He was killed on the first anniversary of the 1967 Six Day War."

Ben-David links to another blog that contains excerpts from a series of articles written by RFK for a now-defunct Boston newspaper, after his visit to “Palestine” in March 1948.

The articles show some things have not changed at all and point to the roots of the Arab-Israeli conflict which are no different 63 years later.

The Arabs are most concerned about the great increase in the Jews in Palestine: 80,000 in 1948. The Arabs have always feared this encroachment and maintain that the Jews will never be satisfied with just their section of Palestine, but will gradually move to overpower the rest of the country and will eventually move onto the enormously wealthy oil lands. They are determined that the Jews will never get the toehold that would be necessary for the fulfillment of that policy.
They are willing to let the Jews remain as peaceful citizens subject to the rule of the Arab majority just as the Arabs are doing in such great number in Egypt and the Levant states, but they are determined that a separate Jewish state will be attacked and attacked until it is finally cut out like an unhealthy abscess.

While the Arabs are unabashedly hostile, the Jews appear naively proud about the benefits they have brought their neighbors:

The Jews point with pride to the fact that over 500,000 Arabs in the 12 years between 1932 and 1944, came into Palestine to take advantage of living conditions existing in no other Arab state. This is the only country in the Near and Middle East where an Arab middle class is in existence.
One thing that seems different in the period RFK describes is Jewish national spirit and morale, which he describes as “101-percent”:

The Jewish people in Palestine who believe in and have been working toward this national state have become an immensely proud and determined people. It is already a truly great modern example of the birth of a nation with the primary ingredients of dignity and self-respect. (...)
The die has long since been cast; the fight will take place. The Jews with their backs to the sea, fighting for their very homes, with 101 percent morale, will accept no compromise. On the other hand, the Arabs say: “We shall bring Moslem brigades from Pakistan, we shall lead a religious crusade for all loyal followers of Mohammed, we shall crush forever the invader. Whether it takes three months, three years, or 30, we will carry on the fight. Palestine will be Arab. We shall accept no compromise.”

Kennedy describes “annihilation” of the Jews as the Arab purpose:


Within the Old City of Jerusalem there exists a small community of orthodox Jews. They wanted no part of this fight but just wanted to be left alone with their wailing wall. Unfortunately for them, the Arabs are unkindly disposed toward any kind of Jew and their annihilation would now undoubtedly have been a fact had it not been that at the beginning of hostilities the Haganah moved several hundred well-equipped men into their quarter.

Jews in that period were actually proud of their settlements:

The Jews have small settlements or community farms such as Givat Brenner in completely hostile territory. They take pride that, despite the great difficulties, they have not evacuated any of them. From the very tip of Galilee right down to the arid Negev these communities exist...
Kennedy agreed with the Jewish claim of British hostility toward the Jews:

The British government, in its attitude towards the Jewish population in Palestine, has given ample credence to the suspicion that they are firmly against the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.
When I was in Cairo shortly after the blowing up of the Jewish Agency [March 11, 1948] I talked to a man who held a high position in the Arab League. He had just returned from Palestine where he had, among other things, interviewed and arranged transportation to Trans-Jordan for the Arab responsible for that Jewish disaster. This Arab told him that after the explosion, upon reaching the British post which separated the Jewish section from a small neutral zone set up in the middle of Jerusalem, he was questioned by the British officers in charge. He quite freely admitted what he had done and was given immediate passage with the remark “Nice going.”
RFK described preparations for the war which would result in the "Nakba" Arabs cry about today:

When I was in Tel Aviv the Jews informed the British government that 600 Iraqi troops were going to cross into Palestine from Trans-Jordan by the Allenby Bridge on a certain date and requested the British to take appropriate action to prevent this passage. The troops crossed unmolested. It is impossible for the British to patrol the whole Palestinian border to prevent illegal crossings but such flagrant violations should certainly have led to some sort of action.
Five weeks ago I saw several thousand non-Palestinian Arab troops in Palestine, including many of the famed British-trained and equipped Arab legionnaires of King Abdullah [of Trans-Jordan]. There were also soldiers from Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Trans-Jordan, and they were all proudly pointed out to me by a spokesman of the Arab higher committee. He warned me against walking too extensively through Arab districts as most of the inhabitants there were now foreign troops. Every Arab to whom I talked spoke of thousands of soldiers massed in the “terrible triangle of Nablus-Tulkarem-Jenin” and of hundreds that were pouring in daily.

When I was in Lebanon and asked a dean at the American University at Beirut if many students were leaving for the fight in Palestine he shrugged and said, “Not now – the quota has been oversubscribed.” When journeying by car from Jerusalem to Amman I passed many truckloads of armed Arabs and even then Jericho was alive with Arab troops. There is no question that it was taken over by the Arabs for an armed camp long before May 15.
The Arabs in command believe that eventually victory must be theirs. It is against all law and nature that this Jewish state should exist. They trace expectantly its long boundary and promise that if it does become a reality it will never have as neighbors anything but hostile countries, which will continue the fight militarily and economically until victory is achieved.
The fight continues.

http://robertkennedyandisrael.blogspot.com/
Robert Kennedy and Israel... A Tribute to RFK

[mark46th]

Teddy Kennedy has the blood of millions of innocents on his hands. I hope he is burning in hell...