{"id":109,"date":"2006-11-22T08:15:57","date_gmt":"2006-11-22T14:15:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php\/2006\/11\/22\/lessons-needed\/"},"modified":"2006-11-22T08:15:57","modified_gmt":"2006-11-22T14:15:57","slug":"lessons-needed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=109","title":{"rendered":"Lessons Needed"},"content":{"rendered":"

The other day, I castigated the Strib’s editorial board<\/a> for its dubious command of history.<\/p>\n

What do you suppose the odds are that I’d have to do it again?\u00a0 This time the offender is Syl Jones<\/a>, the man who combines Lori Sturdevant’s keen evenhandedness, Nick Coleman’s writing chops, and Aaron McGruder’s sharp-eyed rejection of racial cliches.<\/p>\n

He’s just as good when it comes to history!\u00a0 This time, he’s comparing the President’s proposed “exit strategy” with our departure from Vietnam:<\/p>\n

But there is something else afoot here. The folks who brought you “peace with honor” in Vietnam, officially proclaimed in January of 1973 by Republican President Richard Nixon, are also preparing to make a similar phony declaration in Iraq.<\/p>\n

If you don’t remember that original declaration, all you need to understand is that our government’s goal during the war was to prevent the fall of Vietnam into Communist hands. Not only did we fail to do so but our 12-year presence there also inflamed a generation of Communists who subsequently slaughtered millions of their own people.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For starters, Syl, the Communists never needed to be “inflamed” to slaughter<\/a> their own people<\/a>.\u00a0 Or did you ever read about any of this<\/a>?<\/p>\n

While the United States may not be directly responsible for the atrocities committed after it departed, anyone except the most partisan observer would be forced to admit that the whole enterprise could be blamed on a form of faulty intelligence: the domino theory.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No, Syl.\u00a0 The fact that we got involved in a conventional land war in Asia could be blamed on the Domino Theory.\u00a0 The fact that we got into it with hundreds of thousands of conventional troops is blamed on John F. Kennedy’s need for an easy PR win after the debacle of the Bay of Pigs.\u00a0 But the Killing Fields?\u00a0 That happened because we left – and broke our promise to return if things got bad.<\/p>\n

Speaking of “things getting bad”, how are Syl Jones’ thought processes working these days?<\/p>\n

Developed primarily by President Eisenhower’s Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, the domino theory was a racist canard that stemmed directly from Dulles’ days as chairman of the Rockefeller Foundation. In that capacity, he traveled the world with John D. Rockefeller in an effort to convince his boss that the nonwhite populations of the world were growing too rapidly and must be contained.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Just re-read that graf a few times and let it sink in.\u00a0 Syl Jones thinks that containing communism meant containing non-white people.<\/p>\n

(No.\u00a0 That would have been Margaret Sanger<\/a>‘s thing).<\/p>\n

But unlike Vietnam, where the Communists had little desire to kill Americans outside their borders, the militant Islamic insurgency is determined to end American hegemony everywhere. Peace with honor will therefore prove to be impossible in Iraq. To end this war, the American people will unfortunately be forced to face dishonor in the extreme, with little hope of ever finding peace.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That, or seeing this thing through.<\/p>\n

So, Syl – you join me in rejecting the Democrats’ call for a fast, PR-slathered withdrawal?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The other day, I castigated the Strib’s editorial board for its dubious command of history. What do you suppose the odds are that I’d have to do it again?\u00a0 This time the offender is Syl Jones, the man who combines Lori Sturdevant’s keen evenhandedness, Nick Coleman’s writing chops, and Aaron McGruder’s sharp-eyed rejection of racial […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}