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Trump forced to retreat on Afghanistan pledge; Oren M. Spiegler (OMS); Beaver County Times; August 24, 2017.
Mr. Spiegler is such a prolific letter writer the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review gave him a little tribute back in 2003. Google “Oren M. Spiegler” and you’ll get more hits than you know what to do with. Unfortunately, prolific is not a synonym for competent. Mr. Spiegler claims to be a Republican. In my critique of “Breathing more freely,” I cited reasons why I was “beginning to believe Mr. Spiegler is simply another Republican impersonator,” but he sealed the deal with “Greatest foreign policy debacle.” Subsequent letters provided more confirmation. The group of local Republican impersonators also includes Messrs. William A. Alexander, Arthur Brown, Edward J. Hum, Bill Ralston, and George Reese, all claiming to be disgruntled Republicans. While he has previously claimed to be a Republican, this appears to be the first time Mr. Spiegler claimed to be a registered Republican in a BCT letter. If true, Mr. Spiegler joins Mr. Hum in going the extra mile to further his impersonation of a Republican.
ALERT! Though I missed it by several months, Mr. Spiegler finally did the honorable thing and ended his charade and deregistered as a Republican.
You can find links to previous critiques of Spiegler letters I critiqued here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
The BCT has or had a limit of 12 letters per writer per year. In 2014, the BCT either ditched that limit or made a huge exception for Mr. Spiegler. By my count, the BCT published at least 25 Spiegler letters in 2014. Mr. Spiegler and/or the BCT dialed things back a bit in 2015; the BCT published only 15 Spiegler letters in 2015 and 10 in 2016. This letter puts OMS’ 2017 letters at 15 with a little more than four months to go.
Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.
“We see once again the folly of believing the pie-in-the-sky promises made by those who seek office as Donald Trump retreats from a significant one: his pledge to extricate us from foreign conflicts.
“Like President Obama before him, the hope that we will remove our forces from Afghanistan once and for all has gone down the drain as 4,000 additional ‘advisers’ will join our 8,400 service members currently stationed there, continuing a conflict of 16 years duration.
“The bluster and bombast of Trump’s ‘America First’ proclamation has been nullified. We shall continue to be the law-enforcement officer of the world.
“I suppose the only defense the president can muster is similar to what he stated about his bungled health care ‘initiative’: ‘No one knew Afghanistan was so complicated!’”
[RWC] “Like President Obama before him?” That’s interesting. In his approximately 150 letters to the BCT since 2006, including those during the Obama administration, this is the first time OMS mentioned Afghanistan in any context.
Lonzie Cox (LC) did something similar regarding the-late Robert Byrd (RB). In his nearly 60 letters between 2004 and 2010, LC never mentioned fellow Democrat RB’s “racist past.” Then, shazam; three weeks after RB’s death, LC discovered RB’s “racist past” and wrote a letter entitled “Byrd can’t be forgiven racist past.” After “a friend” took LC to the woodshed, three weeks later LC walked back the first letter in “Bush should have heeded Byrd on Iraq.”
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