BCT Editorial – 12/20/09

This page was last updated on December 24, 2009.

War bonds; Editorial; Beaver County Times; December 20, 2009.

As are most (all?) editorials on this topic, this is an example of projection on the part of the Times, and is pretty much a repeat of portions of previous editorials.

As I wrote in a previous critique, “I might be inclined to believe the concern expressed by the editorial is genuine except for one thing. Times editorials consistently do their damnedest to belittle the mission of our armed forces in Iraq. Maybe it’s me, but I don’t honor someone by telling them their actions are misguided and worthless.”

Here are some examples of “troop support” by the Times. First, though the Times told us in graphic terms the surge wouldn’t work (here, here, here, here, here), it said go ahead anyway. The point was to set up the Times to claim it was right regardless of how things transpired. At the time I wrote, “What a gutless position! Worse than gutless, it displays an amazing lack of principles and a willingness to sacrifice American lives to make a political point. If the Times truly believes ‘the effort to pacify Iraq most likely will fail and that many more American personnel will be killed, maimed and wounded in a futile effort,’ it has a moral obligation to fight against the troop increase.”

Second, when Gen. Petraeus reported the surge was having success, the Times told us he was “playing a numbers game.”

Third, you’ll recall the Times gave credit for progress in Iraq over the last 20+ months to the “Sunni awakening,” Iran, and Muqtada al-Sadr, not our troops.

Anyway, let’s get back to the topic of war bonds. Dollars are fungible, meaning that dollars we would spend buying war bonds could (probably would?) be offset by cuts from the general fund. These cuts would be used to fund other nonmilitary programs. If you want to show support for our troops via dollars, I believe it’s better to contribute to charities where the dollars go directly to services for our troops.