The American Spectator

Reader Mail

Bolton Out of the Blue

1.23.08 @ 12:01AM

(Page 3 of 5)

Whatever the Allied leaders' motives or their attitude towards Jewish suffering, they were right to concentrate their available power on destroying the Nazi regime as quickly as possible. Had they done otherwise, I wonder if Mr. Homnick would condemn them for wasting effort on a futile and counter-productive bombing that did nothing but save the Nazis some effort by killing by killing some of their Jewish prisoners.
-- Charles Kalina
Washington, D.C.

Your contributor Jay D. Homnick states today that "McGovern was one of those American pilots who flew over Auschwitz to bomb oil rigs five miles away. He told his questioner: 'God forgive us this tragic miscalculation.'"

While I agree with the sentiment expressed, that Allied military action against Nazi death camps seems on the surface to have been desirable, I cannot help but question the detail presented by Mr. Homnick.

The USAAF would have had substantial difficulty locating oil rigs five miles away from Auschwitz as there were none.

On the 1st August 1943 the US did conduct a raid on Europe's main oil field from bases in Libya, but this oil field was in Ploiesti in Romania, a considerable distance from southern Poland and at the extremity of the range of the aircraft involved ( B-24 Liberators). So difficult was this mission and so high were the casualties (66% of those involved ) that the operation is sometimes known as "Black Sunday."

Operations by the RAF of a similar distance from base (e.g. the raid on Konigsberg of the 29th/30th August 1944 ) were only successful if they could avoid flying over the massive anti-aircraft defenses of occupied Europe. Any raid on Auschwitz would have involved Allied aircraft flying in substantial numbers over the whole of Germany, the Low Countries and much of Poland, subject to ack-ack and fighter attack all the way and at the absolute limit of their range. Ploiesti was bad, but this had all the potential to be much worse.

Any assertion that this is not so tends to ignore fact, as Mr. Homnick did on this occasion.

More importantly for conservative discourse, this approach exalts the ability of both the writer and the reader to emote above the power to reason.

We rightly condemn the "liberal" left for this -- none of us should follow the same path.

Israel has a better friend in truth and the balanced thought regarding future eventualities which Mr. Homnick seeks to display toward the end of his article.

Yours faithfully,
-- Alan Healy
Hamilton
Lanarkshire
Scotland
United Kingdom

BEASTIAL BEHAVIOR
Re: George Neumayr's The Two-Headed Billary Beast:

I agree with Mr. Neumayr. The Clintons vs. the Forthright Young Senator was fun to watch, especially when Mrs. Clinton bugged her eyes out in pretend astonishment. But don't let the entertainment value of the event delude you, no matter how prickly the language. Senator Obama is helping Mrs. Clinton take the White House. That's why he's not using the really juicy things Mr. Neumayr suggests. That stuff may stick or leave bruises.

The simple melody of the bogus conflict between the Honorable Bill and Sister Souljah in '92 is now the grand opera of a running fight between Senator Obama and the former First Lady, with her helpmate providing comic relief. Obama's role in this undertaking is threefold:

(1) He is to run his mouth about truth, justice, taxes and diversity using rhetoric so extravagant it will make Mrs. Clinton appear sane.

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Taxes, Trade, John McCain, Bill Clinton, Religion, Islam, Abortion, Constitution, Law, Military, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, NATO, Communism, Fascism, Conservatism, Nuclear Weapons, Oil