Another chock full ‘o nuts Letters page in the Times this morning. This time the inmates are reacting to an incendiary article about how the Democrats have squandered their mid-century reputation for responsible national security policies.
Jesse Lerner of Fun City, NY starts off the show with a variation on the Republicanz is dum argument:
It is no accident that the modern leaders who most strongly believed in America's right to preach to others — Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush — are the ones who had the least knowledge of, and the least curiosity about, how the world actually works.
Kind of hard to measure curiosity but they sure seem to know how the world works.
Reagan believed communism was an illegitimate form of government and that the Soviets were in an intolerable threat to world peace. Next thing you know, the Soviet Union is gone. Just a coincidence of course. Oh, and by the way, all us Democrats were right there in the trenches fighting the good fight with you . . . just like the French Resistence!
Now we have Bush who believes that Islamofascism is an illegitimate form of government and fascist regimes such as Afghanistan and Iraq are intolerable threats to world peace. Next thing you know, they’re gone and the others, Syria, Iran, Libya, Pakistan, are just coincidentally more receptive to American concerns.
Most infuriating, there he is preaching to the world just like Reagan about how American values such as freedom, democracy, equality under the law apply to the swarthy parts of the world too. Outrageous!
Next up with a remarkable performance of mental jujitsu is Leona Mahler of Cedar Grove, N’jerzy. She begins by saying that Truman and Kennedy were dealing with real threats – an unassailable point.
World War II and the Cuban missile crisis were not based on abstract principles. There were real and concrete events taking place — invasions, totalitarianism and genocide.
So far so good. But then she says the schtoopid Raygun Administration was somehow not dealing with real threats
Let's remember that America's military support in those years was applied very selectively, often on behalf of horrendous leaders, with the decision being based on whether they were ostensibly anti-Communist.
Yes, leaders like Chiang kai Chek in China, Park Chung Hee in South Korea, Ngo Diem in South Vietnam . . . oh wait, those were Truman and Kennedy’s anti-Communists. Never mind about them.
It’s those pesky abstract principles again . . . freedom, justice, human dignity . . . that’s what sets the Repugnantcans apart from the Dems. Democrats only take action when there is an imminent threat. And I mean really imminent . . . think Pearl Harbor or nuclear missiles in South Florida.
And in the center ring, from East Rutherford, N’jerzy, Donald Rosanelli delivers the coup d’grass demonstrating once and for all that Democrats have no clue what makes the world go round by invoking of all people, that foreign policy visionary, friend of crazed tyrants from Paris to Pyongyang, the one and only Mista Jimma Cartare:
David Brooks (column, Feb. 17) should acknowledge that President Jimmy Carter was right in looking to poverty, oppression and the abuse of human rights as root causes of the terrorism we face today.
Islamic fundamentalism is a response to America's cold war policy. The fundamentalists can take advantage of the hatred aroused by America's past support of such repressive regimes as the shah in Iran, the Saudis and Saddam Hussein himself.
Once again, repeat after me, the 19 al Qaeda hijackers were educated, middle class Arabs who harbored a fanatic and murderous desire to wage jihad against the infidels just like Donald Rosanelli. Osama bin Laden is one a member of one of the wealthiest and most priveleged families on the planet and if he is concerned about oppression and human rights he has a unique way of expressing it.
The vast majority of the American voting population (64% vs 24%) does not trust the Democrats with important issues like national security for precisely the reasons articulated by readers in the Times this morning.
The Democrats seem to have no memory of the past, no vision for the future and no means of judging the nature of current reality.
They have an uncanny ability to see the very best motives in our enemies and the very worst in ourselves. They seem far more interested in defeating partisan opponents than foreign ones and they can’t bear to admit mistakes and would rather be guided by dogma than by experience.
It’s no wonder that the most creative and agile minds in foreign affairs are Democrats who changed their minds and went against the prevailing dogma and were ejected from the party like wet watermelon seeds.
They became neoconservatives and the rest of the Democrats became unhinged.
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