Moving Forward

At a recent NATO Summit in Lisbon, Portugal, President Obama said that our progress in Afghanistan is improved from last year and called the overall summit “extremely productive.”[i]

Also at the conference, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) announced Saturday its continued commitment to Afghanistan and affirmed the timetable for a full transition to Afghan security forces and leadership that is set to begin in 2014.[ii]

This commitment from ISAF is an important step in accomplishing our mission in Afghanistan. The commitment from ISAF aides us in our goals of establishing a strong Afghan security force and Afghan military leadership. In affirming their commitment to Afghanistan, ISAF is also creating allies between it’s countries and Afghanistan.

Now that the US has the reaffirmed support from ISAF, we can now keep moving forward in Afghanistan and hopefully be ready to start handing over military and leadership responsibility to the Afghans. Although the timetable has been set, the situation on the ground in Afghanistan must be assessed before we start handing over responsibility to the Afghans. We must be cautious with these steps of withdrawal.

We are making progress in Afghanistan, but we must continue to move forward until the time is right to hand over responsibility to the Afghans and withdrawal, whether that be in 2014 or after.

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[i] http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/11/20/nato-summit-extremely-productive-a-satisfied-obama-says/

[ii] http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/11/20/nato-summit-extremely-productive-a-satisfied-obama-says

Free Speech and the Fallen

A funeral is usually a time for peace. A time for closure and a final farewell to a fallen loved one.  Military funerals are especially emotional because in many cases, the fallen serviceman or woman died in combat at a relatively young age.  These military funerals are meant to honor that serviceman or woman for their service for our country. It would incomprehensible to think that anyone would protest at a military funeral right?

Westboro Baptist Chuch Member

Wrong. Shockingly, the members of the Westboro Baptist Church have protested over 200 military funerals over the last few years. These lunatics choose to protest military funerals to spread express their view that “U.S. deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq are God's punishment for American immorality and tolerance of homosexuality and abortion.”[i]

This is absolutely disgusting and insensitive that a group of religious fundamentalists would choose the venue of a military funeral to spread their outrageously radical views.  But are the actions of these vile human beings protected under the 1^st Amendment? We will see.

Lance Corporal Snyder

These protests gained national attention when the Westboro Baptist Church protested the funeral of Marine Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder, who died in Iraq. At the funeral, the protestors positioned themselves around 30 feet from the entrance of the church and held signs that said things such as “Thank God for dead soldiers” and “God hates the USA.” This protest inflicted extreme emotional distress on Snyder’s family and Matthew’s father, Albert Snyder.

In addition to protesting the funeral the church posted a poem on their website addressed to Matthew Snyder’s parents that defamed the way they the raised Matthew. After the protests and the poem, Albert Snyder sued the church for violating his family’s right to privacy and for inflicting emotional damage. Mr. Snyder initially won the suit in lower courts, but the decision was overturned by a federal appeals court who ruled that the protestors were protected by the 1^st Amendment right to free speech.

The case (Snyder Vs. Phelps) has now reached the Supreme Court where the justices are discussing the issue of right of privacy vs. the right of free speech. Specifically, the main constitutional question in this case is the following: Does the father's emotional pain trump the protesters' free speech rights?

The courts have already heard arguments from both sides and have expressed sympathy towards the Snyder family. Their questioning of Westboro’s attorney, Margie Phelps, suggested that they wish to rule in favor of the fallen Marine’s father, but were not sure if they could. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, "This is a case about exploiting a private family's grief."[ii] Other Justices gave hypothetical statements about similar situations involving radicals berating family members of fallen servicemen. The court will not rule on the case until the spring of 2011.

While there have been some indications from the court that they might rule in favor of Snyder, as tragic as it is to say, it is hard to believe that the court will make any ruling that would limit free speech. They will argue that if you limit free speech at funeral then where else will it be limited… the slippery slope theory.

This case is so controversial because it deals with such an emotional situation, a military funeral and grieving father. It also deals with one of the core rights that we as Americans cherish so much, free speech.

It is heartbreaking that the Constitution defends people that are the scum of the earth, but it does. Even people as vile as the members of the Baptist church. It is hard to grasp that the Constitution defends these types of people, people who cause extreme emotional harm to families of the very people who defend their 1^st Amendment rights. It is a harsh reality, but the Constitution defends negative speech the same as it defends positive speech.

Just as the 1^st Amendment defends the vile actions of the Westboro protestors, that same 1^st Amendment right defends anyone who wants to counter-protest these lunatics. This is how a free nation works.

People must counter-protest these radicals and drown out their ridiculous and harmful messages that they are sending to grieving military families. Exercise your first amendment rights and shut these fundamentalists up so that fallen servicemen and their families can receive the respect they deserve.

Rest in Peace Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder           

           

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[i] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/06/military-funeral-protest-case_n_752310.htmlng

[ii] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/06/military-funeral-protest-case_n_752310.htmlng

Success and Failure on the Campaign Trail

This past summer and fall I had the pleasure of interning on Meg Whitman’s Campaign for governor. There were many exciting moments throughout the campaign and it was very interesting to see how campaigns are ran and how the day-to-day events are scheduled and carried out. I will not spend very much time on my partisan opinion’s about Jerry Brown, but I will just say that he is not the best candidate and is not what California needs right now. What’s tragic is that a sub-par candidate such as Jerry Brown who has no vision or plan for California can win in this state almost merely on the fact that he is a Democrat.

I cannot be too upset over the elections results though. The Republicans gained 60 seats in the House, which gives the GOP the majority. The GOP also gained 6 seats in the Senate. Finally, the GOP also faired well in governor’s races, netting 7 seats. Hopefully the changes that have been made in Congress across the country will help bring this country out of the economic crisis and lead us to success.

Reckless Journalism

Wikileaks, an international organization that leaks secret government information has recently released hundreds of thousands of files about the War in Iraq and Afghanistan. On October 22^nd, Wikileaks released a document that contained 391,832 secret reports from the War in Iraq. This recent leak along with a number of leaks about the Afghan War threatens our national security and undermines our efforts to establish stability in the Middle East region.

Wikileaks is no ordinary media outlet. Wikileaks does not have established war correspondents that report information from the front line. Rather, Wikileaks obtains classified information from anonymous sources that can be submitted to them online or by mail and them disseminates that classified information to news outlets around the world. This is especially troubling because Wikileaks publishes this classified information without understanding the implications of the material or if it is entirely true. 

Wikileaks claims on their website that their publishing of this classified information is an effort to improve transparency and that “this transparency creates a better society for all people.” While I agree that transparency is beneficial to society, I do not believe that it is the general public’s business to know classified information about how our government is conducting a war. The distribution of the classified material that contains many of our strategic goals and operations in both wars is likely to cause more harm then good.

One would be foolish to say that the only people reading these Wikileaks reports is the general public who are just trying to keep their government accountable for their actions. Our enemies, such as the Taliban and Al-Qaeda are reading these leaks and are probably paying more attention to them then many people in the United States are. These leaks give out valuable information to our enemies such as who our allies in the region are. This allows enemies like the Taliban to seek out and kill allies of the United States who are fighting to establish a better society in places like Afghanistan. Does the dissemination of classified material to anyone and everyone in the world create a better society? I think not. 

Another troubling aspect about Wikileaks and their efforts to create transparency is that they are clearly not a neutral news-media outlet. The editor-in-chief, Julian Assange, a Australian computer hacker who does not have a permanent address is known to be anti-war. His anti-war agenda is made clear in this controversial video of an airstrike in Baghdad that occurred on July 12, 2007. The video, which was posted on a website entitled “Collateral Murder,” is gun-camera footage of a Apache Helicopter attack on insurgents in which two Reuters staff members were said to have been deliberately targeted. The video was carefully edited with commentary and distorted viewpoints that created the implication that there were no armed insurgents in the area, which is clearly not true. What Wikileaks failed to post with the video was the first hand accounts of soldiers in the area or the pilot’s reports that said that there was armed insurgents in the area at the time of the attack. If these reports were added in the video, this attack would not have been such a controversy; it would just have been an example of a tragic situation in which reporters were killed accidently along with the armed insurgents that they were following.

 The information that has been leaked is not the only thing that is worrisome about Wikileaks.  It is the precedent that this organization sets. The ability for someone to anonymously submit information and to have that information organized into a large release of documents is especially frightening. It encourages people like Pfc. Bradley Manning, who is responsible for leaking the Baghdad airstrike video along with over 200,000 other classified documents, to easily submit information anonymously to the organization. People like Manning, who was an intelligence analyst should not have such an easy outlet to anonymously disseminate classified information. This precedent that Wikileaks has set is dangerous and will only become more threatening in the future. Organizations such as Wikileaks must be monitored. Individuals should not have the ability to anonymously give out classified material to an organization that can distribute that material without knowing the dangerous implications of releasing it.

I would rather not know the details of how my government is conducting a war then have the details released in a distorted fashion that fosters anti-war sentiment and benefits our enemies.