Friday, March 29, 2024
Miles from the Mainstream
D. R. ZUKERMAN, proprietor
A Wreck Of A War ?

NOVEMBER 20, 2005 --

Apparently the latest basis to denounce the Administration's policy on Iraq is that American forces are "magnets" attracting attack from insurgents.

LPR heard this observation the day it was
reported that more than 70 Iraqis were killed at two mosques by suicide bombers.

LPR is reminded how Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin noted that the Jews were being blamed for a massacre in Lebanon of Moslems by Christians. Here it would seem: Iraqi suicide bombers kill Iraqis and they blame the United States.

Congressman Murtha's call for U.S. forces to be withdrawn immediately from Iraq included the suggestion that officials who do not have military service have no right to respond to him.

LPR is reminded of "Command Decision," a World War II movie about our bombing policy in Europe. The film included one scene in which a member of Congress was criticized by colleagues for meddling in military matters.

A New York Times book, World War II: The Axis Assault, 1939-1942 includes the text of a Times editorial on the fall of Corregidor to the Japanese.

"This is not the time to ask who was most to blame." That is what the Times wrote. May 7, 1942, on our defeat at Corregidor.

The editorial went on to assert: "It is for us to hope that never again will American soldiers be compelled to fight such a
battle, and that from this time forward their naked courage will be clothed with force, with airplanes, with ships, with tanks, with the reasonable chance -- and that is all they ask -- of victory."

The Times editorial urged the American people to resolve "that no jealousies, no intolerancse, no greeds, no ambitions shall rob" American troops "of the least
thing they need."

What a different time it was, 60 years ago -- when politics stopped at the water's edge and The New York Times concluded its May 7, 1942 editorial on the fall of Corregidor by asking the American people to commit themselves "until the cause for which some died and others still suffer has won the day."

Those who view administration policy on Iraq as a wreck have not made clear just what cause they want to win the day.