Letters to the Editor

• Post of Mine on Military.com titled: The New Orthodoxy on Afghanistan

  [Read the article: Obama is saying the wrong things about Afghanistan]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  Posted Sun 20 July 2008 02:38 PM on Military.com

  I get nervous when both candidates and the current Administration seem to agree on a new strategy regarding anything; in this case it is the idea of surging more troops into the Afghan Theater.

  Most Americans had been led to believe that the Afghan adventure was a success. Now, out of the blue, we are being told that a sudden re-emergence of Taliban/al Qaeda military activity is taking place, resulting in US casualties and possibly signaling a renewed insurgency in that country.

  We are being told that elements of the Taliban and al Qaeda have established a sanctuary in the largely ungoverned FATA territory in Pakistan, allowing them to flow troops into Afghan to create general mischief and death.

  Obama, a late-to-the-party McCain and Bush all agree more troops are needed in theater, ASAP. Their solution is more US soldiers, and more effort--military effort--by the Pakistani government to neutralize the Qaeda/Taliban enclaves in FATA.

  I am a civilian, but a civilian old enough to remember the Viet War, and when Nixon accepted the view that the war could not be won unless the US cut off the flow of North Viet men and materiel traveling through Cambodia. That produced widening of the war into the latter country, at enormous materiel and human casualty costs, without winning the war in the end.

  What do you military guys think about this latest--and late--concern with the Afghan Theater? Do you think surging more Americans, most of them coming from the Iraq Theater, into harms way in Afghan is a viable strategy? Is the US occupation of Afghan doing any good in the overall War on Terror (WOT)?

  Is the Afghan culture even more primitive than what we encountered in Iraq, as far as tribal wars, clan feuds that have gone on for centuries, warlords and drug cartels? In other words, does Afghan society make Iraqi society look like a model of modern thinking in comparison.

  I ask these questions sincerely.

  I do not want more US soldiers used as expendable pawns in mis-begotten stretegies of our civilian leadership.

  [Note: I got a reply to this post from a member-veteran (I am a life-long civilian) on Military.com that he allowed me to post on my blog. It is a viewpoint on the mess that I have never seen or heard expressed anywhere else.]

  Permalink Wednesday, July 23, 2008 06:58 PM

• Paglia Inadvertently: (a) Prolongs the Agony of Hillary's National Presence, and (b) Imputes Power to Talk Radio that It Doesn't Really Have

  [Read the article: Accent the negative]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  In no particular order:

  1. It is unfortunate that Paglia found is necessary to join the rest of the media in extending Hillary's presence on the national stage by deeming it necessary to pull her out of the loser's locker room for a good bashing. Though CP and Dowd emphasize the negative regarding HRC, they nevertheless still emphasize HRC, and that's all Hillary really craves. It's as if the sports media were to concentrate their post-game efforts on the LOSER of the Super Bowl or World Series.

  The best verbal action Dowd and Paglia could take to relegate Hillary to the dustbin of history is Silence.

  2. Her musings on the Obama situation, grounded in her own fears and false assumptions, didn't add anything new to the discourse. Chuck Schumer said basically the same things several days ago, but managed to do without sounding weak-kneed, as Paglia did.

  Particularly distressing was Paglia's attributing a casual relationship to the Talk Radio rantings of Limbaugh & Friends in 2004 and Kerry's defeat. These radio entertainers say only what their audience wants to hear. The demographics and political persuasion of their listeners dictate the content of these shows. The listeners are not being converted by what Limbaugh says, they're merely getting their own opinions valorized. It's the media circulation of Limbaugh comments beyond his flock that creates the illusion that he's an influential person beyond his narrow-cast flock of followers. Ironically, Paglia's words valorize the idea of Talk Radio entertainers as serious commentators whose influence spreads over the general public like some vast oil spill in the Arctic.

  Permalink Wednesday, August 13, 2008 05:48 PM