Letters to the Editor Policy

A Billion Dollars

Our esteemed fearless leader has left the arena in the quest for a billion dollars to assure his re-election. Based on his performances of recent days, we should plan on being enamored by his tales of the great and wonderful things which he has accomplished in the last two and one half years and how his government is hard at work to make our life better. Among the items which will not be mentioned will be his trashing of the Constitution, his success in swamping our economy with fiat money, his opening of a third military front in North Africa, and his abject failure to turn our economy around. But don’t worry, we will hear all about how Obamacare is going to balance our budget, how drilling for oil and gas is really bad for us and how open borders are good for our country, but not a word on the drug wars which are breaking out in the American southwest. Unfortunately, in his absence, we will be treated to oversight by his Regulatory Czar, Cass Sunstein, who will use the regulatory process to circumvent the Congress and impose on an already reeling economy the “benefits” of a bureaucratic nightmare of bank regulation, federal tentacles into every drop of water in every stream and pond in the U.S. and a redefinition of the intent of the Second Amendment, among a plethora of other regulations. The man, by virtue of his redefinition of any Act of Congress or Article in our Constitution, will bind our economy and our lives as surely as the Lilliputians bound Gulliver. Gulliver escaped. We, I am not so sure.

Thomas Jefferson said: “Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have… The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.” Franklin said: “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” The Progressives of all stripes would diminish the words of these great men in their quest for power, convinced that only they have the intellectual capacity to show the dim-witted populous what is good for them. Jefferson championed a government of the people, not an overreaching federal government. It is your duty to expend the effort to find and embrace the truth of human freedom, even to the content of letters published in this newspaper. No one, especially me, can do that job for you.

Sincerely,
Joe McCann
Elk Lake, PA

How To Lose Friends And...

... make enemies by bankrolling dictators and inciting wars while being the champion of freedom and the paladin of democracy. It's not easy, but it can be done as it has been done by the U.S. with Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

Making enemy No. 1, Iran.

Muhammad Mossadegh was elected prime minister on the hugely popular platform of regaining control of its oilfields from western interests. This was greeted less joyfully by the western oil companies.

The CIA backed a successful coup by the anti-Mossadegh faction in 1953 that installed the Shaw of Iran as ruler, by far the classiest U.S. stand-in to-date. The royal despot promptly returned the oilfields to the western consortium, a move warmly greeted by the foreign oil companies but less so by the Iranians.

Over time, the Shaw and his secret police, which specialized in inventive torture, unpopularity ripened into hatred. He was ousted in 1979 and replaced with wild enthusiasm by an Islamic republic. (Thank you, CIA.) The oilfields went back into the Iranian fold. Then events went from bad to worse to terrible.

Rumors spread that the U.S. was fomenting another governmental overthrow to reinstall the Shaw. In rage, the Iranians responded by seizing the American Embassy in 1979 and taking its employees hostage.

President Carter, instead of assuring Iran of a hands-off policy, responded with a failed military attempt to free the hostages. This was followed by freezing $12 billion in Iranian assets, trade sanctions, and threats of military action, all of which have continued to this date.

Iran is no more our enemy than we have made her to be. It was never in our interest to create an enemy where a friend would have served us better.

Making enemy No. 2, Iraq.

Saddam Hussein, Iraq's “president,” decided to take advantage of the turmoil in Iran caused by the '79 revolution and settle a border dispute with military action. This coincided with a CIA goal to overthrow the Iranian Islamic republic and get back the errant oilfields.

So began the U.S. proxy war against Iran in 1980.

Despite U.S. help, Iraq lost the eight-year war and ended $80 billion in debt. Iraq's financial squeeze was exacerbated by Kuwait pumping too much oil and lowering its price and slant drilling into Iraq's oil. Once again war loomed, this time with Kuwait.

Saddam met with the U.S. ambassador, April Glaspie, to discuss the planned invasion of Kuwait. Glaspie assured Hussein that the U.S. would not intervene: “We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait.” The trap was set.

President H. W. Bush explained that Washington's attitude toward the Iraq/Kuwait dispute was a “neutral position.” Hussein took that as a green light. He invaded. The trap was sprung.

The president's response to this “treachery” was the famous, “This will not stand.” Months later Operation Desert Storm began in 1990 with the invasion of 200,000 U.S. troops to free Kuwait. It ended seven months later in 1991 with Hussein driven back to his borders.

At the end of the Iraq/Iran War (1988) Washington was faced with the problem of establishing and legitimizing its military presence in the Mideast. “Freeing” Kuwait solved that problem; the U.S. now had boots and bases on Mideast ground.

The CIA then began to set the stage for the second Iraqi war.

Hussein, a former allay, was transformed into a world menace. A preposterous propaganda campaign pictured him building nuclear weapons with mushroom clouds billowing up like, well, like mushrooms.

To save the world from this calamity, the U.S. invaded Iraq. According to a Defense Department official it was supposed to be a “walk in the park.” Operation Iraqi Freedom started in 2003. The military phase lasted only three months but the occupation continues.

Operation Iraqi Freedom and the occupation proved to be an expensive “walk.” In lives, it cost 100,000 Iraqis and 4400 U.S. servicemen. In dollars, it cost $800 billion, more inclusive estimates place it at four times that. The ongoing occupation cost $9 billion a month.

Few would argue that our participation in the Iran/Iraq War and later in the two Iraqi conflicts were anything but tragic debacles. They achieved only the enmity of those two nations and much of the Arab world as well.

Part II will be a synopsis of how the U.S. continued misadventures in the Mideast manufactured two more enemies, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Sincerely,
Bob Scroggins
New Milford, PA

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