American Flag Blog

I just ran across an item in the HuffingtonPost.com written by obnoxious and opportunistic New York politician Mark Green. Green is perhaps best known for his spectacularly failed bid for New York Mayor. Having the endorsement of every liberal organization in the city, he was ahead of Republican candidate Michael Bloomberg by a huge margin.

Then 9/11 happened and Bloomberg wound up eating breakfast in Gracie Mansion every morning. Why? It’s simple - in a city where "Republican" is practically a four letter word, the people of New York trusted the serious Bloomberg over the loudmouth Green to keep them safe from another attack.

In his article, We Owe Pat Robertson and Ann Coulter a Big Thank You, Green levels a tirade against Robertson and Coulter for what basically amounts to their use of hyperbole. This coming from a guy who can hardly open his mouth without making something up. Consider this statement from his article:

"I was 40 blocks north of the World Trade Towers at 8:46AM on September 11 – and saw a plane sticking out of Tower One five seconds after it hit."

We know he didn’t see "a plane sticking out of Tower One five seconds after it hit," because both planes went in and disappeared, never to be seen again. Kinda makes you wonder whether he saw anything at all.

The point of this is not to defend Robertson or Coulter but rather to give you a snapshot of a New York politician who wrongly believes that his views are those of the majority of Americans. Here’s his opening paragraph.

"We owe Pat Robertson and Ann Coulter a big thank you. These two American mullahs of the far right are helping to expose how The Bush Team is in the extreme and we who question this war – most prominently Cindy Sheehan – are in the mainstream."

Well, apparently Mr. Green isn’t up on Sheehan’s hatred of Israel or her love affair with Islamic terror organizations.  Does he know that Sheehan’s pal and director of the Crawford Peace House, Hadi Jawad, has the complete destruction of Israel as his agenda?  Does he know that another Sheehan pal,  Lynne Stewart, has been recently convicted of conspiring with the "Blind Sheikh?" Apparently not. Cindy Sheehan’s beliefs are hardly what you can call "in the mainstream."

If I were a New Yorker, I would be seriously upset by Green’s last sentence, "Cindy Sheehan and New Yorkers don’t need lectures from those that hate the values of a country whose flag they perennially wave." Does he really think that Sheehan’s vocal support of anti-Israel, pro-Islamic terrorist individuals and organizations is representative of American values or more to the point, those of New Yorkers? I think that in Sheehan’s heart, there is a Palestinian flag perennially waving. Give me the American flag any day.

American flags are everywhere in Crawford now that some opposition in the form of the "You Don’t Speak For Me, Cindy!" tour rolled into town. Both sides are clamoring to out-do the other with patriotic displays in the form of American flags. But beneath the show of patriotism, Cindy Sheehan is gathering a group of some very disturbing allies.

I read something the other day (can’t remember where) by a Sheehan supporter who said that it wasn’t fair to slam Sheehan because of  the questionable organizations that have hithched themselves to her wagon.  The writer claimed that that amounts to "guilt by association" and therefor, amounts to a sleazy attack. But is it really?

The old saying goes, "Judge a man by the company he keeps,"  and judging by some of the company Sheehan is willingly keeping, I would say that it’s reasonable to question her motives.

I wrote a couple of days ago about Cindy Sheehan and her alliance with the Crawford Peace House. Sounds like an admirable oranization until you lift up the rock and see what’s living underneath. The driving force behind the Crawford Peace House is an Iraqi and Saddam sympathizer by the name of Hadi Jawad. Jawad is actively involved in the movement to bring about the destruction of Israel and is a big fan of Islamic terrorism having ties to the PLO, Hamas, etc.

Oh, and did I mention that his full name is
Dr. Safa Hadi Jawad al-Habboubi and besides hanging out in Crawford and Dallas, he has a pad in Kensington, England where Islamic terrorists like to plan subway bombings in their spare time. Talk about a guy with an agenda! Here’s what he had to say back in December of 2001 in regards to the U.S.-lead efforts in Afghanistan:

"As the war machinery of the U.S. and U.K. came back to life once again and rained death and destruction on the civilian population of Afghanistan, statements emanated from the White House claiming, "we do not have a problem with the Afghan people but the leadership," echoing the administration of the elder Bush, who a decade ago had expressed similar sentiments saying, "our quarrel was not with the Iraqi people but with the leadership.

"Yet efforts to eradicate well-entrenched leadership there yield collateral damage of colossal proportions: ruined economies, massive unemployment, extremes of poverty, destroyed infrastructure, crippled health care systems; terminally ill, the extreme elderly, children under five, the most vulnerable segments of any society, killed by the thousands—all this in the name of protecting freedom and democracy."

It looks like Jawad really missed the mark with that one. The people of Afghanistan are infinitely better off now than they were under the iron fist of the Taliban.

And now look who’s jumping into the pool to take a swim with Cindy. The white supremacist group, Stormfront has pitched their tent at Camp Casey. And even though their agenda is the same as the Crawford Peace House, they aren’t trying to hide it. James Kelso, Stormfront spokesman and an assistant to David Duke says they came to Camp Casey to "let the world know that white patriots were first and loudest to protest this war for Israel. We want to challenge these leftists with the fact that their leftist leaders, like Hillary Clinton, are on the same war-for-Israel team as the cowardly Republicans who have been bought and paid for in the Senate, House, White House and media by the Jewish Neocon political machine."

So in case your thinking that Cindy Sheehan is so lost in grief that she isn’t paying attention to the voices like these that surround her, consider her own words from an appearance on Nightline with Ted Koppel, "My son joined the Army to protect America, not Israel."

These are not the ideals the American flag represents.

A few weeks ago, Eve Tidwell showed up in Crawford, Texas to stand up as a counter-protester to Cindy Sheehan’s Camp Casey crowd. This weekend, she was back for the third time from her home in Columbus, Georgia. But this time around, she had plenty of company and she was ready for them, bringing a giant American flag with her. The flag was made from paintings done by children of soldiers at Fort Benning.

The "You Don’t Speak For Me, Cindy!" caravan rolled into town bringing with it thousands of Bush supporters. Deborah Johns, the California mother of a Marine serving in Iraq, organized the caravan that came all the way from Sacramento. And how’s this for irony - she requested to meet face-to-face with Cindy Sheehan but was refused. Sheehan slithered out of that confrontation by claiming that she will only meet with mothers who have lost a son in the war.

There are plenty of honest people of good character who stand on both sides of this issue. But Cindy Sheehan and the rif-raf that have attached themselves to her don’t measure up to those standards. Eve Tidwell has very simply and eloquently pointed out the difference.

When she had a chance to speak at a rally on Saturday to a crowd of more than 2000 supporters, she stood up in front of the American flag she had brought with her, thanked the troops for their sacrifice, and was off the stage in less than a minute. Then, after setting up a tent and ordering truckloads of ice and bottled water, she fended off praise by saying, "They needed it, so I did it. This is not about me. It’s about our troops. Our young heroes, our protectors of freedom and democracy. I grieve for Cindy’s son, I do. But she’s tarnishing his honor by what she’s doing."

There are those who do what they do out of a sense of gratitude for what they have and a sense of obligation to others. Then, there are those who will do almost anything, including the exploitation of loved ones, to draw attention to themselves.      

Cindy Sheehan’s son, Casey, despite what media outlets such as CNN and Cindy herself say, re-enlisted after a four-year tour of duty knowing full well that he would be headed for Iraq. Sheehan says that her son was oposed to the war effort, but actions speak louder than words. So what is Sheehan really all about?

I wrote in a previous post that Sheehan was a dupe for radical fringe groups who are using her to promote their own agendas. While the part about fringe groups promoting their own agenda is obviously true, after taking a closer look, Sheehan seems to be a willing participant with some very creepy characters.

A huge part of Sheehan’s followers in Crawford are a contingent of anti-America, anti-Israel, pro-Palestine Liberation Organization activists. Plenty of PLO flags can be seen with this crowd but American flags are nowhere in sight. It’s the people of Crawford who are flying the American flags in front of their homes and businesses. One business is even flying a flag of Israel - an apparent poke in the eye to the activists with the PLO flags.

So what’s the deal with a pro-PLO demonstration going on in Crawford? If, as the anti-war activists claim, the former regime of Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with terrorism, why are these supposed anti-war protesters promoting a known terrorist organization? Look no further than Sheehan and the organization she’s jumped into bed with.

The Crawford Peace House is merely a front organization for radical Islamist activists who’s goal is the destruction of Israel and no doubt, the United States as well. It’s founder and director is one Hadi Jawad, an Iraqi who is pro-Baathist (same as Saddam), a board member of CAIR (a group dedicated to the conversion of the United States to an Islamic state), and a secretary for the American Muslim Alliance (a group with strong ties to two terrorist organizations, Hamas and Hezbollah). Beneath their lip-service to peace is a river of hatred towards the U.S.

And as for Sheehan, the veneer of grieving mother barely hides a soul full of hatred for America. Earlier this year, Sheehan made an appearance at San Francisco State Universtity along with Lynne Stewart, a woman Sheehan refers to as her Atticus Finch (Atticus Finch was the lawyer in the book, To Kill a Mockingbird, who defended a black man wrongly accused of rape). Lynne Stewart has been recently convicted of conspiring with the "Blind Sheikh," Omar Abdel Rahman, the mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. At that event, included in Sheehan’s vile rant was the following line, "This country is not worth dying for."

So much for the "poor little grieving mother" routine.

A sordid chapter in the saga of the 9/11 attacks came to an end this week.

An American flag that, it was claimed, had flown from a construction crane over the Penatagon on 9/11, was destroyed in a ceremonial flag burning by two Boy Scouts and the Loudoun County, Virginia, Boy Scout Commissioner. John Andrews, a construction contractor, had purchased it on Ebay with the plan of flying the large American flag above a new elementary school in a Virginia suburb, but decided instead to burn the flag to end a controversy over it’s authenticity.

The flag was obtained earlier this year by David Nicholson who placed it for auction on Ebay. It sold for a whopping $371,300 but the bidder backed out when Facchina Contruction denied flying an American flag from the crane when the attack occured. That’s when Andrews stepped in to snatch the flag up at the bargain basement price of $25,000. Nicholson, who is suffering from kidney cancer, says he needs the money to provide for his family when he’s gone, so he’s suing Facchina Const. for the difference.

Believe me, I sympathize with Mr. Nicholson. Terminal illness can be devastating to a family. But there is something cynical and downright tawdry about selling artifacts from the site of a massacre for personal gain. I would be embarrased to tell friends and family, for example, that I paid money to own a chunk of concrete from the Twin Towers.

If this particular American flag did, in fact, fly over the Pentagon on that day, it qualifies as part of that hallowed ground where American lives were lost at the hands of an enemy. Under the circumstances, I think that Mr. Andrews did the right thing in affording this flag the respectful disposal that all American flags deserve. 

With Cindy Sheehan’s quick return to Crawford, American flags are selling like hotcakes at the Yellow Rose general store. While both sides of this particular protest are waving plenty of American flags, it looks like only the anti-Bush crowd is interested in defacing them.

By this point, Cindy Sheehan is pretty much just singing to the choir. Many of the media outlets are beating the drum for her, but in our media-drenched society, people have generally figured out how to seperate the wheat from the chafe. So the more Cindy opens her mouth, the less people will buy what she’s selling. Add to this the fact that some very questionable groups have attached themselves to her and it’s inevitable that her star is about to fizzle.

A case in point is the Crawford Peace House, her chief sponsor and a virulently pro-Palestine/ anti-Israel group. Some might call them anti-Semitic and they would have some good evidence. The Crawford Peace House featured Eugene Bird as the main speaker at a rally in Cindy’s camp. Eugene Bird is well known as a notorious anti-Semite who would like to see Israel completely destroyed.

I would hesitate to accuse Cindy of anti-Semitism. I think, instead, that she is a dupe for organizations that hate America as it stands and are very sympathetic to the radical Islamic agenda. As for Cindy’s agenda, I believe, with her little American flag with a peace sign hanging around her neck, she is soaking up as much of the limelight that she can.

Consider this exchange she had with a young man on her way back to Crawford. She wrote this herself and sounds less like a grieving mother than like a woman smitten with her own celebrity.

"We were not talking about me and what I have been doing. Randomly, he told me he had just been in Texas about an hour north of Crawford. I said: ‘Wow that’s where I am going and that’s where I have been all month.’ He said: ‘I know I own a television.’ I thought that was pretty cute."

I just hope for her sake that when the people who are now using her decide she’s no longer of use to them and they drop her, she doesn’t fall too hard.

A recent comment from a reader contained one true statement - that our form of government is a republic, not a democracy. A pure democracy is much to volatile to preserve freedom for very long. A republic, on the other hand, is democracy by way of elected representatives, which provides a firewall against rapidly changing public opinion.

The problem we’re facing  right now as a republic is this: the courts, and the Supreme Court in particular, have been doing end-runs around  our constitutional amendment process for decades. Amendments are the mechanism provided in the Constitution to afford we the people a way to change the Constitution via our elected representatives. But the courts  have not felt constrained to merely interpret laws by viewing them through the lens of the Constitution. Instead, they have taken it upon themselves to amend the Constitution without relying on the amendment process.

Hence, we get rulings like the 1989 Texas vs. Johnson in which the Supreme Court ruled that burning American flags  should be protected by the First Amendment as political expression. This, of course, required that the word "speech"  be expanded to include expression.

Perhaps the American flag issue is not a big deal (although I am partial to the subject of American flags), but it becomes a very big deal when the same sort of mischief by the Court is applied to other subject matter.

The recent Kelo vs. the City of New London ruling effectivly changed the term "public use" to "public benefit" and has roots in very disturbing soil. Prior to Kelo, your property only be taken for public projects like schools or highways. The Court has paved the way to allow your property to be seized by another private citizen for any use at all as long as your local government declares the confiscation to be of public benefit.

Our republican form of government has as it’s cornerstone, the right of the individual to keep property without fear of confiscation. Some forms of government, on the other hand, take a completely different view of property rights.

The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property. - Karl Marx

Two weeks ago, an editorial condeming the proposed Constitutional amendment to probit the desecration of American flags appeared in The Daily Herald, a local Utah newspaper. Last week, The Daily Herald published a rebuttal from the chairman of the Citizens Flag Alliance, retired Army Major General Patrick H Brady. In his rebuttal, Mr. Brady skillfully bulldozes the flawed reasoning contained in the editorial.

The Herald’s argument is built on the premise that the First Amendment free speech clause encompasses other forms of expression including, but not limited to burning American flags. They write that, "Hatch and the flag alliance (sic) say an amendment is necessary to rein in a renegade Supreme Court that has improperly spread a cloak of protection over flag protests. In various rulings, the court has held that flag desecration constitutes political expression protected by the First Amendment."

But of course, the First Amendment does not protect "expression." That notion was an invention of the Court in the 1989 Texas vs. Johnson case. The "various rulings" the editorial refers to are all post 1989 citing the Johnson decision as precedent.

Brady correctly answers with the following:

"Sadly, the Herald confuses speech and expression. One need only think of the many types of expression to know why the founders wisely eschewed ‘expression’ and chose ’speech.’

"Walter Berns, in ‘Making Patriots,’ highlights this point: ‘The First Amendment protects freedom of speech, not expression, and, whereas all speech may be expression of a sort, not all expression is speech, and there is good reason why the framers of the First Amendment protected the one and not the other.’ If the Founders intended ‘expression,’ freedom of the press and assembly become redundant.

And he adds:

"On the day after the Supreme Court decision the Senate (including future opponents of the amendment), without dissent declared in SR-151: ‘… the act of desecrating the flag is clearly not ’speech’ as protected by the First Amendment.’ …"

The people who are gearing up to oppose this amendment when it hits the Senate know that the issue is not really about desecrating American flags but rather, about whether or not "expression" should continue to be protected under the free speech clause of the First Amendment.   

American anti-war protesters are comparing our current situation in
Iraq to our involvement in Viet Nam more than three decades ago. A lot
of of these protesters also identify themselves as former Viet Nam War
protesters who have easily slid back into the role this time around.
All comparisons of Viet Nam with Iraq aside, there is a crucial
difference between then and now.

When Jane Fonda sat atop a North Vietnamese tank in Hanoi, there was
no chance that the North Vietnamese, or even the Chinese for that
matter, could launch an attack on U.S. soil. In the meantime, the world
has gotten a whole lot smaller. In Iran, Sean Penn tries his hand as a
foreign correspondent.  He sat in a restaurant listening to Mehdi
Rafsanjani, son of the former Iranian President lie to him while
Iranians burned American flags in the streets. For example, Rafsanjani
told him, “There are four or five dissidents only who are currently in
prison.”

That is not surprising since they don’t waste jail space on lawbreakers. Here’s an excerpt from iranchamber.com:

Under
Islamic law –that is, the Shari’a– Iran’s punishment for prostitution
has been severe. On 3 July 1980, two women accused of prostitution were
buried up to their necks and then stoned to death. In a similar case in
1997, three women were stoned to death in public after a court found
them guilty of adultery and prostitution under Iran’s Islamic law.

In
response to questions about Iran and nuclear weapons, Rafsanjani dodged
the issue with a question, “Why does the U.S. administration continue
to pressure and pry into our business?"

So what it boils down to is that ambitious dictators and
totalitarian regimes have the resources and capabilities to wage war
around the world like never before. By all accounts, Iran and North
Korea will soon have the capability to launch missles with nuclear
warheads. China already has that capability and having just
participated in joint military exercises with Russia, it would be
reasonable to imagine that they might be able to expect some help from
Russia in that respect.

And 9/11 proved that our enemies don’t require sophisticated weapons
to inflict significant losses here on American soil. Americans who burn
American flags with the thought that they’re contributing something
useful to the mix should think again. If your mantra is "Stop the war,"
whether you want it or not, the war will eventually come to you.

Part-time lawyer and beginner artist Stephen Pearcy is disappointed that his California Justice Department exhibit is almost at an end. Pearcy’s finger-painting depicts an American flag in the shape of the United States being flushed down a toilet and has been at the center of a free speech free-for-all in Sacramento.

I say almost at an end because California Attorney General Bill Lockyer couldn’t quite bring himself to completely remove the painting that not only insults American flags, but the President as well. Instead, he had it removed from the cafeteria where patrons were heartened that they could again eat lunch without being neauseated, and had it reinstalled in a hallway near the 17th floor men’s room.

Attorney General Lockyer, a sponsor of the ridiculous exhibit, has managed to avoid the media directly by hanging his frontman, Nathan Barankin, out to take the flak. But it looks like Lockyer wasn’t so lucky in avoiding Governer Schwarznegger because after sponsoring the exhibit and praising the artistic talent of the artist/lawyers saying that it is “an honor to co-host this powerful exhibit… the collected fine works of these artists – and lawyers – achieve these worthwhile objectives with style and beauty,” he suddenly decided to remove the painting under the cover of darkness.

The interesting thing about all this is that the people involved in foisting this exhibition on unsuspecting cafeteria clientele are now at odds with one another over free speech and censorship issues.

Attorney General Lockyer, speaking through mouthpiece Barankin, said the painting had been  spirited away ”out of concern for the events going on in the Middle East right now.” An ambiguous statement if ever there was one. Barankin added that it was a department decision and didn’t amount to censorship.

Ellen Taylor, an organizer for the exhibit who is a little ticked that no one told her the painting was to be removed, disagrees with Barankin. Pondering the implications of the painting removal, she was heard to say, ”It made you really stop and talk and think about what the Constitution really means. What would it mean, then, to not allow it to be there because you don’t like what it says?”

Thank you Ellen for framing the real question so neatly for us. The Constitution guarantees the right of free speech but it doesn’t guarantee you the right to be heard. And it certainly doesn’t guarantee that your message must be dispalayed on the cafeteria wall of a government building. The government, federal or state, should not be the sponsor of, or forum for, one particular political ideology. I hope that answered your question Ellen.

And Pearcy, who obviously dislikes institutional food, dejectedly whined, ”This exhibition, the sole purpose was to have it… in the public space — in the cafeteria.” Here’s some free advice: next time, paint a smiley face instead of an American flag going into the toilet.