Letters to the Editor
RobbySh
Published Letters: 173
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Mikey
[Read the article: Slamming Wesley Clark]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Mikey is a little dense. McCain crashed that airplane because the airplane had been shootdown by enemy fire. He was then taken prisoner and performed well as a prisoner. Just as ask the men who were there with him. Kerry, on the other hand, is not highly regarded by the men who were with him.
No, McCain was never a flag officer, for reasons we do not know, but he is very familiar with
the military. In fact, too familiar so far as the Obamaites are concerned, because his father and grandfather were flag officers and outstanding ones. McCain knows the military as intimately as Obama knows the triniity Church. He also knows Washington politics as well as Obama knows Chicago politics. I do not know what else Obama knows. Certainly not much about the military.
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Gets you fact straight.
[Read the article: What John McCain didn't learn in Vietnam]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The gentleman is so obscessed by Vietnam that he forgets totally about the example of Korea, which is what McCain had in mind. But the history of Vietnam is not exactly what he tells us.
When Nixon was inaugurated for the first time, there were 500,00o troops in Vietnam. When he began his second term, , hardly any combat troops were left there. But Nixon disappeared in 1974 and Gerald Ford was a cipher. South Vietnam was overrun in 1975 by a convention invasion by North Vietnam. A heavily Democratic Congress prevented any American response to help the South Vietnamese government. The Democrats had simply written off South Vietnam. I am afraid that Obama. is a McGovernite Democrat whose mind is so clouded by hatred of what he thinks is a puppet regime that he would stand by if the Iraqi government were overthrown/taken over by Iranians or their surrogates.
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Lessons of history
[Read the article: What John McCain didn't learn in Vietnam]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]With all due respect to General Odam, when he says
I challenge you to press the administration's witnesses this week to explain this absurdity. Ask them to name a single historical case where power has been aggregated successfully from local strong men to a central government except through bloody violence leading to a single winner, most often a dictator. That is the history of
feudal Europe's transformation to the age of absolute monarchy. It is the story of the American colonization of the west and our Civil War.
He forgets two examples, albeit in situations very different frim that of Iraq, but instructive:
(1) Our own Revolution and
(2) India.
They share this in common that they were heavily influenced by British Imperialism.
Neither country found its footing without much bloodshed. and to be fair, the history of Pakistan, with its Muslim culture, serves as a counter example.
But if history teaches anything it is that a powerful enough impulse can produce results that confound the predictions of both pessimists and optimists.
Above all we ought to avoid the philosophical error of historicism, which I think that the general is guilty of right here.
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To historybuff I
[Read the article: What John McCain didn't learn in Vietnam]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You say:
The Iraqis aren't aware of it either. They're aware of a cruel conquering army trying to brutalize them into submission. That's why they're trying to get you out.
Hyperbole does not make an argument. " Cruel," "Brutalizing."? Well, the same could be said of Sherman's Army, and even if true, that does not mean that Slavery was not a cruel and brutalizing institution nor that the white Southerners were innocent victims who were justified in resisting this Army. To this very day there are old ladies who hate the name of Sherman and Lincoln. They are entitled to their feelings, but life goes on.
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cabdriver
[Read the article: What John McCain didn't learn in Vietnam]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Knowing a little a bit about "history," and about Korea after 1953, you seem(1) to forget that history is written by the historians, so "factoids" are the elements of the narrative that is created by the historian. We are far past Ranke's delusions about a scientific history and I hope, marxism which is based on that delusion. (2) You seem unaware how ALIEN a place like South Korea was in 1953 to the average American soldier. To be sure, the Koreans are more open than the Japanese to our interpretation of reality, but all in all the place seemed as hellish as Iraq must seem to the average troop today. Just ask a few people who were there.
Going to another point, you seem to forget that George McGovern is alive and well and that his ideas have pretty much been adopted by the democratic party, except in so far as they have gone past him. McGovern is a nice man, and because of his personal experience he probably has both a better and worse opinion of the military than the peaceniks who dominate the party today, but he is essentially a socialist who, so far as I know, has always held the 1948 Porgressive Party view that the Cold War was our doing. As for Obama, he and his friends do seem to be disciples of McGovern but less honest in their views.
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Philadelphia Steve
[Read the article: What John McCain didn't learn in Vietnam]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You say:
In order to be a Republican Candiate, one must say:
The fewer taxes a government collects, the more balanced the federal budget will be. Unless Republicans spend like Democrats, which has been the case.
The Vietnamexe War was on the verge of victory, but Liberals lost it (pick any date). No, but the South Vietnamese government might have survived if a heavily Democratic Congress had no abandoned it to the tender mercies of the North Vietnamese invaders.
Weapons of Mass Destruction have been found in Iraq since the US invasion. No, but one WMD, Saddam Hussein, who played a cat and mouse game with the inspectors, and, IAC, had every intention of restarting his nuclear program after sanctions were lifted, was found and eliminated.
Democrats Hate America As she has been, according the a widely held caricature that is evident in the Moveon.org blogs and as preached from the pulpit of Obama's church
and from the lips of his wife.
God is a Republican. Well, he is sure not a member of the Reverend Wright's church.
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Jon Dubya
[Read the article: Jesse Helms dies on July 4th]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Thank you, sir, for being so gracious.