The Last Anti- Obama Tirade
In this column, I’m turning over a new leaf. I’m finished with my anti-Obama crusade. Mmmhmm, you might think; why would Coffee have an anti-Obama crusade in the first place?
Let me tell you why.
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All the years I was in the Communist prisons of North Vietnam, I maintained faith in our mission there — to provide the South Vietnamese the opportunity to choose their own type of government rather than have communism imposed upon them by military force from North Vietnam. Every year I was there, experiencing communism up close and personal, my faith grew stronger.
We were released from captivity in 1973, in accordance with the peace deal signed by President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in Paris, which provided for the incremental release of all POWs and, among other things, for the necessary military material support, training and, if necessary, continuing air support for South Vietnam’s future defense.
In early 1975, the North Vietnamese — contrary to the agreement they had signed — began probing attacks against certain targets in the South. President Nixon was totally preoccupied by the Watergate scandal, and the post-Vietnam anti-Nixon Democratic Congress voted not to provide any of the U.S. assistance provided for in the Paris Peace Accords. When the North Vietnamese leadership sensed there was not going to be significant resistance to their probes, they launched an all-out military offensive, which in a matter of days (in great part because of the lack of U.S. aid), resulted in the fall of Saigon, an immediate purge for those who had collaborated with the Americans, a massive exodus of refugees (Boat People) and the Communization of the whole country.
When our politicians let South Vietnam fall to the Communists in April 1975, it was particularly devastating to American families who had sacrificed loved ones — sons, fathers and husbands — to thousands who had suffered life-changing war injuries, to MIA families or to those of us who had sacrificed prime years as POWs. Our politicians had snatched defeat from the jaws of our victory. If I could have even figured out how I should feel about it, I would have felt better.
Fast forward 40 years. Replace the names Khe Sanh and Hue with Ramadi and Fallujah, and South Vietnam with Iraq. Now our president has snatched defeat from the jaws of our victory. Yet he is on record with the flip explanation: “That is how wars are ended in the 21st century.”
No, Mr. President, that is how wars are lost — in the 21st (or any) century. You might join me, Dear Reader, in trying on the shoes of a father or mother of an American soldier or Marine sacrificed in Iraq (and possibly Afghanistan in the future) for … what?
By his post-war policies in Iraq, our president has given it all back to ISIS.
As an American who has experienced firsthand the evil in this world and understands why it must be resisted, I am really PO’d about our unnecessary losses in Vietnam, and now in Iraq. And if any of my four sons or two daughters had been sacrificed there, you can multiply that “POedness” by infinity.
That is why I have written and spoken out against this president and his policies. Not that I am so naive as to think my opinion could make a difference on the national scene.
But judging from the last election, just maybe there are enough like-minded local columnists out there who are privileged to write for great little local papers like MidWeek who have enough readers, in the conglomerate, to make some difference.
In any case, my faith in the American electorate has been restored.
coffee1776@gmail.com
