Stripes letters: "the current U.S. admin. is a fascist one, by definition"

lebkuchen

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Tue Oct-25-05 11:51 PM
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Stripes letters: "the current U.S. admin. is a fascist one, by definition"

Read all of these Stripes letters below, in today's Stripes--they're excellent.

‘Reality’ requires truth

I feel compelled to respond to “Major offers his answers” (letter, Oct. 14) and the writer’s chastising of a previous writer, stating that she needed “to stop slurping at the selfish, short-sighted trough of appeasement and take a long draught of reality.”

I don’t know what type of reality he may be referring to, but my type of reality requires the main ingredient, the truth!

The major stated that we are fighting “Islamo-fascist terrorism.” Was this some “newspeak” word he learned in war college? Fascism, by definition, is the marriage of business and government, so by the strict sense of the word, we could logically imply that the current U.S. administration is a fascist one, by definition.

The writer also states that Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons on his own people, but he fails to realize the truth — that Saddam acquired his stockpile of weapons from the Reagan administration, along with the Germans and French in the 1980s. Saddam gassed Iran with our blessing, as well.

The writer of “Major offers his answers” also says that “evidence has been found showing multiple contacts between Saddam’s government and Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida organization.” I think that he needs to take a sip from his own “draught of reality,” because there has never been a piece of evidence ever found linking the two, period.

The sad fact is that people are caught up in the sensationalism of the moment and the past is always being conveniently forgotten. That is short-sightedness. I am in no way a fan of terrorism, but I refuse to sacrifice the truth for posterity. The hard and sad truth, major, is that the U.S. supplied Saddam in the ’80s, and there are no connections between secular Saddam and radical bin Laden. I know the truth hurts, but turn the boob tube off and pick up a history book sometime.

Henry Hubbard
Ansbach, Germany

Another Jane needed

Hey, guys and gals, why don’t you ask one of us involved in the Vietnam War about Jane Fonda? She was my hero, and I do not mean this sarcastically.

She was one of the few prominent people who kept the opposition to the Vietnam War alive in the United States and riled enough anti-war liberals throughout the world, the U.S. and in the military itself to force that proven unjust war, which had been based on political lies, to an end.

Wars like Vietnam and what is happening now are not a reality show. They cost, and are costing, a lot of lives on both sides. Walk along the Vietnam memorial in Washington, D.C.; and those were just the USA’s gift to the politicians who fought anything in my generation that fell under the “angst” word of communism. Are we starting on another memorial? This time, the new phrase is Muslim Terrorism and the fear is propagated by the self-righteous Christian right, who would deny the right of heaven to anyone but themselves.

Let’s get another prominent Jane Fonda-type who will rile up enough of our U.S. and world citizenry to make our politicians cringe enough to stop playing God with our young people. This will probably not happen, since the prominent wealthy and middle class are no longer sending their kids to the all-voluntary forces like they were made to during Vietnam, when the draft got most of us. The families of the less fortunate have no lobbies.

Air Force Maj. Klaus-D. Paul (retired)
Kaiserslautern, Germany

‘What’s the real issue?’

“AF filling nontraditional roles in combat zones” (Los Angeles Times article, European and Mideast editions, Oct. 12) by Mark Mazzetti and Greg Miller said: “Straining to find ground troops to maintain its force levels in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon has begun deploying thousands of Air Force personnel to combat zones in new jobs as interrogators, prison sentries and gunners on supply trucks.”

Isn’t this the same Pentagon that says the Army is at its optimum size and has been insisting all along it had plenty enough troops there to do the job?

What’s the real issue? They won’t admit they were wrong? Are they looking for another way to criticize the real ground forces (i.e. Army)?

Robert D. Doleman
Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Germany

http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=125&article=32520