Gino Piroli – 7/18/05This page was last updated on July 23, 2005. Ex-resident endures pro-Bush sentiment; Gino Piroli; Beaver County Times; July 18, 2005. This column is mostly snippets from previous Piroli columns. See the critiques in Piroli watch to see what I mean. I guess it was a slow week for “the good old days” topics, or Mr. Piroli realized eight weeks had passed without an anti-Bush column and he was short on new material. Below is a detailed critique of the subject column. “Former Center Township resident Mike Bickerton, a 1962 graduate of Monaca High School, sent me a letter criticizing President George W. Bush, especially his war in Iraq and saying that ‘this is the worst leadership’ he’s ever lived through. [RWC] It’s not President Bush’s war; it’s our war. Unless Messrs. Bickerton and Piroli missed it, terrorists have been attacking the U.S. since the 1970s. “Of course he’ll get no argument from me. I’ve said on many occasions that I’ve lived through 14 presidents, and he’s proving to be the worst. I agonize most days with the incompetence and shady manner in which we’re being led, but many letters to the editor have stated the outrage better than I could.”
“Bickerton moved to Laurel, Del., in 1972 to teach, and retired from that profession last year. His family still lives in Center, but he says the Delaware area where he lives is Bush country.” [RWC] I suspect this will probably gall Mr. Piroli, but you don’t have to go as far as Delaware to find “Bush country.” During the 2004 election, some Beaver County municipalities showed themselves to be “Bush country.” In fact, my Center Township precinct is “Bush country.” Also, since John Kerry got only 51% of the vote in Beaver County, Beaver County is hardly anti-Bush country. “The portion of the letter I identified with was the criticism he received from the pro-Bush advocates. Although he served in Vietnam in 1968, he was called unpatriotic because he didn’t agree on going to war where and when we did.” [RWC] Unfortunately, serving “in Vietnam in 1968” doesn’t guarantee you are patriotic (Remember the actions of Vietnam Veterans Against the War?), though I have no reason to suspect Mr. Bickerton isn’t patriotic. I don’t know if I believe Mr. Bickerton was called unpatriotic or not. Why? During the 2004 campaign, if you opposed John Kerry’s foreign policy positions, you were accused of calling him unpatriotic. Most other Democrats have picked up that tactic. Second, if Mr. Bickerton was called unpatriotic, we don’t know what he said or how he said it so we don’t know if calling him unpatriotic was justified or not. Simply disagreeing with any war is not unpatriotic. How you disagree can be. “I remember receiving similar comments going back to a column in May 2003, when I stated my objections to going to war even before the administration conceded that there were no weapons of mass destruction and no ties to terrorists. At that time, I was mourning the death of 145 servicemen killed in Iraq. That number is now 1,766 and growing. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says we might be there for 12 more years.” [RWC] I wondered how long it would take for Mr. Piroli to allege personal attacks against him. It’s not a real Piroli political column without his claim of victimhood. “No [Iraq] ties to terrorists?” Does Mr. Piroli get his news on this subject from Al-Jazeera and Michael Moore? Iraq’s ties to terrorism go back to at least the early-1990s. As I mentioned in a critique of Mr. Piroli’s April 26, 2004, column, “Did Mr. Piroli forget that the convicted chief conspirator of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Ramzi Yousef, reached the United States with an Iraqi passport? Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, is an uncle of Yousef. The bomb maker -– Abdul Rahman Yasin (an American citizen) -– ended up in Iraq after the bombing.” In 1998, President Clinton launched an attack against a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant because the CIA reported Osama bin Laden had an ownership position in the factory and had met with Iraqi chemical weapon scientists. The CIA believed the factory was producing VX nerve gas. Given his previous columns, you shouldn’t be surprised Mr. Piroli misrepresented Mr. Rumsfeld’s statement. Here’s the actual quote (from a Fox News Channel interview of 6/27/05) to which Mr. Piroli refers. “We’re not going to win against the insurgency. The Iraqi people are going to win against the insurgency. That insurgency could go on for any number of years. Insurgencies tend to go on five, six, eight, 10, 12 years. Coalition forces, foreign forces are not going to repress that insurgency. We’re going to create an environment that the Iraqi people and the Iraqi security forces can win against that insurgency.” I don’t know how long we’ll be in Iraq, but it’s fairly clear Mr. Rumsfeld didn’t say, “we might be there for 12 more years.” “The 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center were an attack on our way of life, and we all applauded the actions against the Taliban in Afghanistan and the hunt for Osama bin Laden. But this administration diverted this war on terrorism and instead invaded Iraq for reasons it has never adequately explained.” [RWC] “We all applauded the actions against the Taliban in Afghanistan and the hunt for Osama bin Laden?” That’s BS and is another example of revisionist history. Though Mr. Piroli may have felt this way, many on his end of the political spectrum did not. Most liberals in Congress voted for action against Afghanistan, but it’s my opinion that was only because they didn’t want their true feelings known at the time. As time separates us more and more from 9/11, liberals feel freer to show us who they are. For example, terrorists are killing people and folks like Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) apparently want them treated like shoplifters. “Reasons it has never adequately explained?” Read the Iraq War Resolution passed by Congress. This resolution listed all the reasons. “Some say we fight them there so we won’t have to fight them here. Where is there? Iraq? Fourteen of the 19 men involved in the 9/11 attacks were Saudi Arabian; Moroccans were blamed in the train bombings in Madrid; and in the recent suicide bombings in London, those thought to be responsible were of Pakistani descent. “The terrorists in Iraq are the ones we brought there with our war. We’ve gone through many stories justifying the invasion, but the administration has seemed to settle on freedom and democracy for the Iraqi people. Those flip-flop excuses don’t justify the sacrifice of even one brave American serviceman.” [RWC] As noted above, Mr. Piroli is having a Michael Moore moment if he believes pre-war Iraq was a terrorist-free zone with children flying kites in meadows of flowers. Regarding justification of the invasion, Mr. Piroli apparently wants to ignore – and wants us to ignore – the Iraq War Resolution. “The Bush administration has run a campaign that implies criticizing the war is not supporting our servicemen. Mark Twain said: ‘Patriotism is supporting your country all the time and your government when it deserves it.’ “We support the troops to the point that we grieve each time one is lost and want them back with their families as soon as possible.” [RWC] I thought Mr. Piroli would be smart enough to avoid the “I support the troops” BS. I was wrong. Let’s use a couple of analogies closer to Mr. Piroli’s heart. What if I said the publishers and editors of the Times were a bunch of lying political hacks who wouldn’t know a real journalist if they tripped over one, but I supported Mr. Piroli? What if I said Mr. Piroli’s columns sucked and read as if written by a talentless political hack, but I supported Mr. Piroli? Would either of those hypothetical statements ring true? Of course they wouldn’t, yet when people like Mr. Piroli say equivalent things about the Bush administration and the Iraq War, they expect us to believe they “support the troops?” That’s self-serving BS and they believe we’re stupid enough to buy it. --- “Now that the one-issue groups will be getting the Supreme Court justices they want, perhaps they’ll now concern themselves with the many other problems confronting this nation.” [RWC] Why does Mr. Piroli believe the pro-abortion (one-issue) groups “will be getting the Supreme Court justices they want?” I believe the odds are that “one-issue groups” won’t get what they want. With any luck, we’ll get justices who can issue opinions based what the Constitution says, not based on what they want it to say. This is the kind of justice liberals oppose. “By the way, what happened to the Bush Social Security privatization program? It seems its unpopularity has sent that program to the back burner.” [RWC] There never was a Socialist Security “privatization” program. Folks like Mr. Piroli merely like to characterize personal accounts as privatization. “I enjoyed when he asked the hand-picked audience at town hall meetings to tell Granddaddy that he would still get his check each month. “He didn’t understand that we granddads, the ones some younger people like to call ‘greedy geezers,’ knew we would still get our Social Security checks.” [RWC] Mr. Piroli “knew we would still get our Social Security checks?” How could he know that? Doesn’t Mr. Piroli claim President Bush is a lying so-and-so at every turn? “The real concern is that there won’t be Social Security checks for our children, grandchildren and generations to come.” [RWC] Right, and I have a bridge to sell you. Note that, as most of his fellow travelers, Mr. Piroli provides no suggestions to make this happen. At some point in time, I hope there won’t be any Socialist Security checks for anyone because we will have worked ourselves out of this mess. © 2004-2005 Robert W. Cox, all rights reserved. |
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