Andrew and Mary Anne Ruskin – 7/18/05

This page was last updated on July 23, 2005.

Patriotism is not silence; Andrew and Mary Anne Ruskin; Beaver County Times; July 18, 2005.

I hope the Ruskins’ son returns safely from his Iraq tours.

Unfortunately, I believe the Ruskins are relying on propaganda from the left to help form their opinions.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.

“We support our troops but not the war. Our son is in the Army and has been to Iraq. He is scheduled to return for another 12 months. He will again be stationed in the Sunni triangle in the heart of the major unrest.

“To John Zobrak and everyone who criticizes our position and calls us unpatriotic, we have this to say: Do you have a child in Iraq? If you do, then we respect your opinion. If you don’t, are you putting your mouth where your patriotism is and encouraging them to enlist to fight this war you feel is so justified?”

[RWC] Mr. Zobrak never called people who disagreed with him “unpatriotic” – not even close. Mr. Zobrak simply stated you couldn’t blast every aspect of the war and then get away with claiming you “support the troops.”

This is the second time Ms. Ruskin made this accusation. She first made this false assertion against a letter writer in her October 24, 2004, letter entitled “Support Kerry, troops.”

“It’s easy to talk the talk when you have nothing at stake. Our support for our son is 100 percent. This war is a separate issue.”

[RWC] I disagree that support for the war and support for the troops are separate issues. You can’t bash every aspect of a war in a public forum – and in so doing provide aid and comfort to the enemy – and then actually believe this helps the men and women in harm’s way. As a reminder, the anti-American media in the Middle East pick up all this criticism and provide it as positive support to the terrorists. Folks, this isn’t 1776; what we say in the U.S. ends up in anti-American media outlets within hours.

“Zobrak seems to have forgotten the lies that sent us to war, lies many of us saw through from the start. He feels the war is justified because of the oppression the Iraqis lived under with Saddam as their dictator. If that is his criteria for war, then we can easily name a half-dozen other countries we should invade. Would he support that policy and those wars?”

[RWC] Folks like the Ruskins stopped providing examples of the alleged “lies” after each example was disproved. Now they merely throw around the “Bush lied” mantra and expect us to accept it as fact.

“Let us repeat again for all of you who still believe the lies: Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. None of the 9/11 hijackers was from Iraq. Most were from Saudi Arabia, and we still consider them an ally. Also, and maybe more important, al-Qaida was not in Iraq prior to the war.”

[RWC] Note to the Ruskins: No one – including the Bush administration – claimed Iraq had anything to do with 9/11 and no one claimed any of the hijackers were Iraqi.

Al-Qaida and terrorists in general were in Iraq prior to the war. The Ruskins 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.

The head al-Qaida terrorist in Iraq – Abu Musab al-Zarqawi – went there before the Iraq War after being wounded in Afghanistan. Why would he flee to Iraq if he didn’t expect a friendly reception?

“This great country was founded by patriots questioning the authority of their time. They were not blind followers of rulers telling them how and what to think. We think they would have no problem with dissenters of this war.”

[RWC] There’s no comparison between what the Ruskins are doing and the Founding Fathers. Our Founding Fathers dissented against tyranny and put their lives on the line. The Ruskins are employing lies in an effort to keep their son safe. In practice, comments like the Ruskins’ probably do the opposite.

“‘Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.’ - Thomas Jefferson”

[RWC] The Ruskins appear to forget that in time of war, how you dissent is at least as important as the dissent itself.