The American Spectator

Reader Mail

(Page 2 of 16)

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I happened to read James Taranto's piece on Mr. Jett's op-ed. I enjoyed it much, as I do most of Mr. Taranto's humor. But, Mr. Lord's analysis and debunking of Mr. Jett's feckless political nonsense is ever better. Mr. Lord presented a fact-based rebuttal that was at once humorous and ruthlessly insightful. Mr. Lord's reference to famous defeatists like McClellan, Lindbergh, McGovern, Chamberlain and Laval was very good. Mr. Lord's recounting of the sequence of events in the early to mid-1930s was truthful and accurate. Finally, Mr. Lord's analysis and rejection of the notion that foreigners have more knowledge and better judgment about history and world affairs than American statesmen was excellent.

p>Very Good! br> -- Doug Santo br> Pasadena, California /p> p> Mr. Lord's writing helps to relieve much anxiety and give great comfort. It is good to know that such a brilliant mind as his is on the side of the "good guys." br> -- Jim Jackson /p>

When Jeffrey Lord was a White House "political director" the existential threat to America consisted in roughly four Soviet thermonuclear warheads or atomic bombs for every county in the nation. When Jeffery Lord was an infant, it consisted in Axis forces comprising millions of troops, and thousands of ships and warplanes of a tripartite alliance supported by colonial resources captured from several of the greatest empires the world has ever known, and one of the nations in that axis being the acknowledged technological superior of Great Britain.

Along comes a senior diplomat with service on three continents to remind us of the difference between that constellation of forces and nineteen fanatics with box cutters throwing one hell of a sucker punch at our less than vigilant nation. What does Mr. Lord do that Ronald Reagan did not? Adduce the lesser present danger posed not by a national leader, but a man without a country reviled by most of his own coreligionists as a justification for a greater diminution of liberty than the late President would ever propose or tolerate.

p>This really will not do, for the impression of invincible innumeracy conveyed by Mr. Lord's first few hundred words is merely confirmed by the pages of self-justification that follow. Others have made Ambassador Jett's case more cogently, but this is the weakest, longest, and least compelling defense of a bad historical analogy I have seen so far this year. br> --

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