The Discerning Texan
All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.
-- Edmund Burke
-- Edmund Burke
Thursday, August 23, 2007
The NYT, Vietnam, Iraq, Selective Memory, and Blind Partisanship
Rick Moran has a great piece up on The American Thinker about the New York Times storyline that the aftermath of Vietnam was all sugar and spice. It is one thing to post cogent arguments about why we should cut and run (admittedly a monumental undertaking); but it is quite another to ignore the genocide and two million souls who are no longer with us--directly because of our scandalous abandonment of our South Vietnamese allies (thanks to the Democrats and a hostile media then...). To me this speaks volumes: the same people wailing and moaning for the US to send troops to "stop genocide" in Darfur would gladly look the other way while a similar holocaust was unleashed on the Iraqis were we to abandon them. The Democrat equations are easy to understand: Lives in Darfur = African American votes = "worth risking American lives to save"; Lives in Iraq (and strategic victory for Al Qaeda and Iran annexing 1/3 of the worlds oil supply) = Keeping the Leftist base happy = "expendable", especially if they can find a way to blame "Bush's war"...
They don't care if up to a million Iraqis could be slaughtered in the immediate weeks following an American retreat in Iraq. And I might add--a retreat even as we are turning the tide militarily. This is what is left of what was once the party of Thomas Jefferson. The party of the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence it is trying to engineer a humiliating and disastrous defeat of a new Democracy from the jaws of a Gen. Petraeus victory. In fact I heard Hillary Clinton today saying we needed to replace Malicki---"we"??? Funny, but I thought it was the Iraqis that voted him in. How interesting that--in the name of salvaging some iota of advantage out of their failed "all in on defeat" stance--the first thing the Democrats want to abandon is the Democracy. And then next I suppose losing a million or more Iraqi "democrats" is well worth it if they can pick up a couple of more Senate seats.
This is not only sick, it is treason. And the New York Times is behind it one hundred percent. What an abomination.
From Moran's AT piece:
And in case you forgot what the only man with integrity left at the New York Times--their senior correspondent in Iraq, John Burns--had to say about the probably aftermath of an American withdrawl from Iraq, here is a reminder:
This IS the situation. Yes it sucks, but these are the facts. We have a party that wants America to lose. So what are we going to do about it (and about them...)?
They don't care if up to a million Iraqis could be slaughtered in the immediate weeks following an American retreat in Iraq. And I might add--a retreat even as we are turning the tide militarily. This is what is left of what was once the party of Thomas Jefferson. The party of the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence it is trying to engineer a humiliating and disastrous defeat of a new Democracy from the jaws of a Gen. Petraeus victory. In fact I heard Hillary Clinton today saying we needed to replace Malicki---"we"??? Funny, but I thought it was the Iraqis that voted him in. How interesting that--in the name of salvaging some iota of advantage out of their failed "all in on defeat" stance--the first thing the Democrats want to abandon is the Democracy. And then next I suppose losing a million or more Iraqi "democrats" is well worth it if they can pick up a couple of more Senate seats.
This is not only sick, it is treason. And the New York Times is behind it one hundred percent. What an abomination.
From Moran's AT piece:
When it comes to Viet Nam, the New York Times has a curious sense of the historical record.I disagree; if the New York Times has its way, Iraq will be a part of the Islamic Caliphate of Iran 30 years from now. And the millions who died in the postwar genocide will have turned into dust and bones. Personally, I'd rather see the Times be "deceased" in 30 years.
Commenting on President Bush's Viet Nam analogy used in his speech to veterans yesterday, the Times made this jaw dropping observation:In urging Americans to stay the course in Iraq, Mr. Bush is challenging the historical memory that the pullout from Vietnam had few negative repercussions for the United States and its allies.And just to show that this is indeed, the company line at the Times about the aftermath of the Viet Nam war, Thomas Shanker uses the exact same phrase in a news analysis of the President's statements today:The American withdrawal from Vietnam is widely remembered as an ignominious end to a misguided war — but one with few negative repercussions for the United States and its allies.Are they serious? Cambodia, an ally of the United States during the war, might have a little something to say about the Times' contention that there were few "negative repercussions" for them. Genocide on a scale that boggles the mind doesn't rate as a repercussion, I guess.
And what about Thailand? An ally of the US then and today, they surely didn't view our retreat from Viet Nam as anything except a setback for their security.
Then there is the now defunct Southeast Asian Treaty Organziation - SEATO - which went belly-up following our withdrawal from Viet Nam in 1977. Is the Times trying to argue that a collective security organization disbanding as a result of our pullback is not a "negative repercussion?"
I suppose emboldening the Soviets in Africa, Central America, and elsewhere - a direct consequence of us showing a lack of will in Viet Nam - wasn't too bad. After all, who cares about the Angolans anyway? Or the Salvadorans? Or the Nicaraguans? All three nations (and more) became recipients of Soviet attentions following our Viet Nam withdrawal. Would the Russians have been so bold otherwise? Certainly a debatable question but one where an affirmative answer can be well argued.
The Times is only reflecting the fact that the left in this country has been unable to face up to the consequences of their advocacy for withdrawal and abandonment of Viet Nam. Indeed, in the Shanker piece, one historian makes a liar out of the Times reporter:“It is undoubtedly true that America’s failure in Vietnam led to catastrophic consequences in the region, especially in Cambodia,” said David C. Hendrickson, a specialist on the history of American foreign policy at Colorado College in Colorado Springs.It makes one wonder what the Times writers will be saying about Iraq 30 years from now. ...
And in case you forgot what the only man with integrity left at the New York Times--their senior correspondent in Iraq, John Burns--had to say about the probably aftermath of an American withdrawl from Iraq, here is a reminder:
Got that? So, in summary--a million dead Iraqis, a humiliating US defeat to AQ and Iran, and the most dangerous country of religious zealots on Earth sitting on 1/3 of its oil? No problem--just so they can blame Rapublicans. A victory in Iraq?? Out of the question. Welcome to the Democrat Party strategy.HH: Now you’ve reported some very tough places, Sarajevo, Afghanistan under the Taliban, and after the liberation from the Taliban, and you’ve won Pulitzers for that. When you say cataclysmic civil war, what do you mean in terms of what you’ve seen before? What kind of violence do you imagine would break out after precipitous withdrawal?
JB: Well, let’s look at what’s happened already as a benchmark. Nobody really knows how many people have died here, but I would guess that in terms of the civilian population, it’s probably not less than 100-150,000, and it could be higher than that. I don’t think it’s as high as the 700,000 that some estimates have suggested, but I think it’s, and I know for a fact, that the sort of figures that were being discussed amongst senior American officials here, as a potential, should there be an early withdrawal and a progress to an all-out civil war, they’re talking about the possibility of as many as a million Iraqis dying.
This IS the situation. Yes it sucks, but these are the facts. We have a party that wants America to lose. So what are we going to do about it (and about them...)?
Labels: Defeatocrats, Democrat Sabotage, Genocide, Iraq, Media Bias, Media War
