Rich Laughlin – 2/2/07

This page was last updated on February 12, 2007.

Ignoring the lessons of history; Rich Laughlin; Beaver County Times; February 2, 2007.

The last time I critiqued one of his letters, Mr. Laughlin was telling us how bad Ronald Reagan was. This letter is of similar quality. It is a name-calling rant from beginning to end.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.

“Most of us who were around during the Vietnam debacle came away from that experience with pretty much the same opinion.

“Both pro-war and anti-war sides of that dispute agreed on one thing for sure: that we should never get stuck in a quagmire on foreign soil again.”

[RWC] I could be wrong, but I believe it’s fair to say that was everyone’s desire before Vietnam and before Korea.

“Regardless of the political, religious and/or economic considerations given for getting involved in a war, it was obvious to all that before sending combat troops into harm’s way we needed both a winning strategy and an exit strategy.”

[RWC] “Exit strategy” is liberalspeak for surrender. Who in their right mind enters a war with a plan for surrender? If you plan for surrender, you lost before you started.

“That hard-earned lesson was paid for with the 57,000 American lives that were lost in that war. You’d think such a lesson would have sunk in.

“Not so. The chicken hawks, the neocons and the draft dodgers of the Bush administration have ignored the lessons of history and have dragged us into another quagmire.”

[RWC] To the best of my knowledge, there are no “draft dodgers” in the Bush administration. Remember, a draft dodger is someone who did something illegal to evade the draft. As I’ve covered before, Bill Clinton is an example because he lied to a ROTC colonel to evade the draft.

“Emboldened with irrational confidence in his own faith-based ideology and unchecked by any actual war experience that have might dampened his blood thirst for war, Bush threw us headlong into Iraq with bad intelligence as the reason.”

[RWC] Hmm, neither FDR nor Dwight Eisenhower had “any actual war experience” before World War II.

“With a toxic mix of arrogance, incompetence and outright stupidity, he and his dysfunctional gang have lied, mismanaged and blundered us into where we are today.

“There is no valid argument that can justify the invasion of Iraq. The arguments against immediate withdrawal now seem equally unjustifiable.”

[RWC] Nothing like a closed mind. While I believe invading Iraq was the right thing to do based on the information available at the time, I also recognize there were valid arguments against military action.

“The lesson to learn from this is one that Vietnam should already have taught us - that the U.S. government is definitely capable of making horrific mistakes, that it’s not unpatriotic to loudly and clearly refute the government when it makes such mistakes and that it is unpatriotic to mindlessly, uncritically fall in behind and support a bad president like Bush.”

[RWC] I wonder if Mr. Laughlin can write a letter not based solely on name-calling. No wait, I think I know the answer.