Letters to the Editor
-
Oh When The Latter Day Saints
Go Marchin' in,
Oh, when the Latter Day Saints go marching in,
Oh, how I want to be in that number,
When the Latter Day Saints go marching in.
-
You mean _this_ FDR:
Secretary of the Navy from 1913 to 1920 FDR? The one who gave the following speech in 1936:
We are not isolationists except insofar as we seek to isolate ourselves completely from war. Yet we must remember that so long as war exists on earth there will be some danger that even the nation which most ardently desires peace may be drawn into war.
I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen men coughing out their gassed lungs. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed. I have seen 200 limping, exhausted men come out of line—the survivors of a regiment of 1,000 that went forward 48 hours before. I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.
I have passed unnumbered hours, I shall pass unnumbered hours thinking and planning how war may be kept from this nation.
I wish I could keep war from all nations, but that is beyond my power. I can at least make certain that no act of the United States helps to produce or to promote war. I can at least make clear that the conscience of America revolts against war and that any nation which provokes war forfeits the sympathy of the people of the United States. . . .
-
The hollow men
Glenn, keep it up!
Nothing disgusts me more than seeing these scared little boys puff themselves up & pretend to be so big & tough & strong -- by sending others off to fight & die in their place.
I can only think of Richard Pryor & Gene Wilder swaggering along & saying, "That's right, we bad, we bad!" Except that there's no humor in this ugly reality, unless it's in the very sick joke of letting others die to reinforce their own sagging & insecure illusion of manhood.
Really, is this what passes for grown up men today?
-
Underlying character
Romney's continued alliance with the warpervs reveals a split with his Mormon heritage. A defining characteristic of their beliefs is the patriarchal system with vast power invested in the father. Wikipedia:In addition, the LDS Church considers a father to be a natural patriarch in his household, meaning that it is his duty to preside within his own family, taking the lead in spiritual matters within the home.
Since George Romney eventually saw through the lies behind the Vietnam war, Mitt eventually had to admit his father was right in this regard. From the NYTimes article:
“I was surprised,” Mr. Romney recalled, “when I heard my father, then running for president, say that we were wrong, that we had been told lies by our military, that the course of the war was not going as well as we thought it was and that we had been mistaken when we had entered the war. It obviously caused me to reconsider what I had previously thought.”
He added, “Ultimately, I came to believe that he was right.”
Yet, despite perfectly repeating his father's pattern by visiting Iraq during his Presidential campaign, Mitt doesn't honor his father's memory and refuses to see through the "brainwashing" inherent in the Iraq road-show. Some interesting tidbits from the Boston Globe on Romney's visit to Iraq:
In the past, Romney has criticized the lack of good intelligence leading up to the Iraq war. Yesterday, he sidestepped the question when he was asked in an interview with the Globe if he would have supported the war had he known then what he knows now of the intelligence failures, and in light of the continued heavy civil strife that is wracking the country.
``I am not engaging in Monday morning quarterbacking," Romney told the Globe. ``I supported the war, as did Congress and many Democrats. We have learned some lessons about the period immediately following major conflict. I believe we are doing the right thing."
[snip]
Romney started his trip in Washington, where he was briefed Monday by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to his office. He went to Kuwait City, then arrived in Baghdad Tuesday at about 11 a.m. EST and left at about 10:30 a.m. yesterday.
Today, Romney and the other governors are scheduled to meet with President Karzai of Afghanistan and Afghan governors in Kabul as part of the six-day trip.
They will also visit a provincial reconstruction team at an undisclosed location. They are scheduled to spend tonight at the US Embassy in Afghanistan . Tomorrow they will breakfast with troops before heading back home through the American military facility in Ramstein, Germany.
[snip]
His visit to the front lines of a controversial war theater provokes memories of the visit to Vietnam by his late father, George W. Romney, then governor of Michigan and a leading contender for the 1968 GOP presidential nomination. The elder Romney, a moderate Republican, saw his campaign unravel after he said on his return that he had been ``brainwashed" by American officials who briefed him on the war effort.
http://tinyurl.com/yw5vf5
The Iraq trip by Romney is an exact replica of his father's and the "brainwashing" by the Defense Department and State Department on these trips has been well-documented many times. How is it possible, for someone whose faith is so dependent on the positions of the father, to not see the absolute parallel of his experience with his father's and to come to the conclusion that the Iraq war is wrong?
Oh yeah, maybe it's because his father didn't get the Repbulican nomination once he opposed the war. And the other thing we learned about Mitt in the NYTimes profile is that he hates to lose and wants nothing more than to be in charge:
And he was eager to move up. After a promotion in early 1968, Mr. Romney complained that he was still subordinate to a fellow missionary.
“I went into the president’s office and said: look president, ‘ith eitha you orh me that is goin to run thith place,’” he wrote to a friend, again imitating a cartoon character. He said he got nowhere, adding: “Really, it’s not that bad — it’s just that I feel like I’ve been broken.”
Thorry fella, you ain't gonna run thith place.
Dithgusting.