Jerry Miskulin – 12/11/09

This page was last updated on January 2, 2010.

Vietnam-Afghan parallels obvious; Jerry Miskulin; Beaver County Times; December 11, 2009.

I encourage you to review Mr. Miskulin’s body of work in the archives. Mr. Miskulin has written at least 50 letters since 2004 (I didn’t critique all of them.). Most (all?) are illogical and full of falsehoods (not just wrong).

In recent letters (here and here), Mr. Miskulin expressed displeasure with the tea parties and proclaimed “Rush Limbaugh is a propaganda minister.”

Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.

“I remember when they used to chant, ‘Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids you kill today.’”

[RWC] Mr. Miskulin has a good memory, if he’s telling the truth. He would have been only about 12 years old when LBJ left office. In any case, have you noticed for every U.S.-involved conflict someone always manages to find a “parallel” to Vietnam?

“In Afghanistan, take Karzai to be another Diem. Take the Taliban to be the Vietcong. Corruption was an epidemic in South Vietnam, as is corruption in the Karzai regime. The Afghan army fears the Taliban, just as the South Vietnamese army feared the Vietcong.

“Finally, you can’t tell who’s your enemy or who’s your friend in Afghanistan, just like Vietnam.”

[RWC] That’s true for all wars. If it weren’t, collaborators, spies, et cetera wouldn’t exist.

“It seems strange to me, but Americans are not nice people. We are responsible for more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians being killed. We invaded another sovereign country (Afghanistan) when all the while our country’s economic structure takes on the outlook of a Third World country.”

[RWC] “Americans are not nice people?” Yep, we’re a real bunch of meanies. It’s too bad Mr. Miskulin didn’t tell us whom we should emulate.

As for “100,000 Iraqi civilians being killed,” Mr. Miskulin didn’t name his source (if he had one) and there are as many estimates as there are estimators. The estimates tend to vary based on the political goals of the estimating group.

As for “invad[ing] another sovereign country (Afghanistan),” we invaded a bunch of sovereign countries during World War II. Even after the 9/11 attacks we would not have invaded Afghanistan had the Taliban (Afghanistan’s government at the time) turned over al-Qaeda to us and not provided al-Qaeda with safe haven.

“Third World country?” Mr. Miskulin must read and believe too many Times editorials.

“America represses so it can only see what it wants to see. When it breaks, I hope this doesn’t all seem new. For as they say, knowledge is power.”

[RWC] “Knowledge is power?” I’ll pass; that’s too easy.