The American Spectator

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Exactly Right

8.29.07 @ 12:01AM

TEST OF STRENGTH
Re: James Bowman's A Question of National Honor:

Mr. Bowman has it exactly right. I might add, too, that the effect on the fighting man, is also demeaning. I served in Vietnam 1967-1969, with the 3rd Marine Div. I was told, at a VFW meeting, by an old WW2 vet, "We won our war!" I replied, "The Damn Democrats wouldn't let us win ours!"

You say it much better than I! Semper Fi!
-- Bernard Blank

This column is exactly dead on. Every American President and member of Congress should frame this and hang it on the wall. Going to war always has consequences. No nation ever lost a war and gained international acclaim for having done so.

MacArthur had it exactly right: "There is no substitute for victory."

Patton also had it exactly right, in his advice on leadership: "Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way."

The American people deserve better leadership, but then, we elected them...
-- R. Goodson
Vero Beach, Florida

Thanks again for another political article from James Bowman. I would like to make a few follow up comments:

1. Honor is doing the right thing regardless of detractors. Doing the right thing builds trust.

2. Self-indulgence is not the right thing to do. Self-indulgence results in self-hatred. A nation of citizens obsessed with self-indulgence cannot be trusted, e.g. F-R-A-N-C-E. Hence David Horowitz's appropriately labeled "Destructive Generation."

3. "We" did not loose the war in Vietnam. In fact, the Communists were losers in every major operation. During "Tet" our forces handed them back their body parts by the tens of thousands. Regardless, screwballs like Walter Cronkite, Ramsey Clark, Jane Fonda (and whining old Henry), Gregory Peck, Paul Newman, Barbra Streisand, Bill Clinton, the Democrat-controlled Congress, etc., etc. managed to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory.

4. Our forces will leave the Middle East when a super majority of people surviving there decides to join the rest of the civilized world. I estimate that would be sometime after our forces leave Germany, Japan, Korea ...

5. For our worldwide neighbors, the pleasure of our company is most often followed by health and prosperity...at the reverenced cost to us in our best and bravest. In this, true Americans can be trusted.
-- Carl Gordon Pyper USMC 1969-72
Monett, Missouri

The Vietnam analogy seems to be a "pick and choose" work among the opposition to the Iraq war. I suppose they "want what they want" and will support it with what they want, rather than a hard and uncompromising stare into the facts.

I've been seeing another analogy out of American history lately. Back in 1876 or so -- I'm doing this from memory so my own knowledge of the facts may be a little off -- a war-weary North decided to end Reconstruction and withdraw Federal troops from the South. How many people died because those troops were withdrawn?
-- Robert Nowall
Cape Coral, Florida

Letter to the Editor

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Foreign Policy, Bill Clinton, Television, Social Security, Islam, Books, Military, Iraq, Russia, Pakistan, Socialism, Communism, Oil