Kevin Fischer is an award-winning veteran broadcaster who has been seen and heard on Milwaukee TV and radio stations for nearly three decades.
Kevin, who is a legislative aide to state Sen. Mary Lazich (R-New Berlin), can be seen offering his views on the news on the public affairs program, “INTERchange,” on Milwaukee Public Television Channel 10. He lives with his wife, Jennifer, in Franklin.
I’ve often thought one of the national or cable newscasts should open up each program showing footage of the attacks on the Twin Towers on 9-11.
The impatient American public, sadly and shamefully, has forgotten why we are at war, why we are in Iraq, and why we fighting terrorists. A constant video reminder of those evil, murderous attacks seems to be in order now more than ever.
Far less than half of the American people support George W. Bush, an unpopular President. About the same number support the war effort.
A major reason Americans have lost faith is because the mainstream media is forever feeding us the mantra that the war is a failure and nothing is going right.
Allen Andrew Dennison has another view. First Sergeant Dennison is currently serving in Iraq with the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division.
He’s written an outstanding piece for the American Thinker I heard WISN’s Jay Weber discuss today.
Dennison makes some bold assertions in his piece, the type of beliefs and convictions you’ll never hear on ABC, NBC, CBS, or CNN:
1) We are winning the war in Iraq.
2) We must re-establish our resolve as Americans to win the war.
3) Nothing short of victory will do.
4) Too many Americans have forgotten the big picture, that we are fighting to protect our freedoms, and that will take sacrifices.
Here’s part of Dennison’s column:
(In Iraq) things on the ground are much more complicated than Katie Couric or the New York Times will tell you.
Here in Iraq, the war is without a doubt being won. Along with the set-backs and fatalities, we are winning important moral and military victories, and both of those kinds of wins are equally important. Yet, I see played out all too often on the evening news the supposed despair we are facing in this seemingly hopeless land. Now, without bashing the mainstream media, I believe they too have fallen into the same rut of short-sightedness. They have become vultures picking over the remains of what happens here in Iraq simply because they know that Americans have become accustomed to hearing bad news about US military operations. The simple and the sensational sells, but it rarely accords with reality. This is why they peddle little more than war-weariness.
The overall situation in Iraq is improving: Iraq is steadily regaining its economic feet; oil production is back on the upswing, higher than prewar output; men and women of all creeds are enjoying a newfound sense of freedom; insurgents, terrorists, and foreign fighters can no longer openly parade about in public and dominate Iraqi communities by means of fear, terror and murder. Regardless of what the world's media may depict, Iraq is undoubtedly progressing in the right direction. With the tide beginning to turn in our favor and against our enemies, we need to reaffirm our resolve as Americans to win this war.
As Americans and the world's only remaining superpower, we still have an inherent obligation to police up the world's trash. As ugly and tedious a responsibility as this may seem, it certainly falls on us to carry it out. We all saw first-hand on September 11, 2001 what awaits us if we even hesitate to stomp out evil as it begins to spread. Unfortunately, isolationism is apparently becoming fashionable again in the international community and among the chattering classes when it comes to the Middle East. The belief that not getting involved spares a society getting its hands dirty is much in vogue.
We as soldiers (past and present) know better. We know that serving our country calls for the courage to go against the grain of conformity, and maintaining the integrity to follow through with what you know to be true. Nothing short of victory will suffice for our country's future security.
It is a shame that while the whole of the United Nations believed that Saddam Hussein possessed the weapons that could wipe out entire cities at whim, they seemed ugly reluctant to impede him from employing such weapons. We should remind ourselves that the United States is by far the most diplomatic superpower in modern history. America did in fact give Saddam and his Baath Party a fair shake in cooperating with UN officials. Hussein and his lackeys simply scoffed at the world as they obstructed the US inspectors investigating the truth about Iraq's weapons arsenal. But among the member nation states of the United Nations who called for such investigations, none was willing to act on what they believed to be an imminent threat in Iraq. Granted, intelligence may have proven wrong on weapons of mass destruction, but before we knew of any faulty intelligence, the international community was uniform in its certainty that Saddam had access to such weapons. The US rightly took it upon itself without the support of the majority to put an end to negotiating with rogue nations and terrorist organizations. The day of diplomatic resolution to imminent threats was over.
