Some comments on the letter of John L Simon in today’s Sun-Sentinel

March 10, 2008

Letters to the Editor

The Sun-Sentinel

200 East Las Olas Boulevard

Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301

RE: Some comments on the letter of John L Simon in today’s Sun-Sentinel.

Sirs,

I once bought a drink from a big, out going bartender named Moynihan in a saloon on 8^th Avenue in Manhattan. He went on to do other things such as being a tenured professor at Harvard, Ambassador to India, Ambassador to the United Nations, and then a United States Senator.

One of his favorite sayings was “You are entitled to your own opinion but you are not entitled to y our own facts”.

You crammed a lifetime of errors into 5 paragraphs. Actually, if you discount the rather smarmy introductory paragraph it’s only 4.

Let’s start with Churchill.

The Northwest Frontier, Omdurman, Cuba, the Boer War. That’s 4 wars before he was 25. 4 wars on 3 different continents. As Casey Stengel used to say, “You could look it up”.

He led a cavalry charge against the Fuzzy-Wuzzies at Omdurman. He had a price on his head in the Trans-Vaal.

Why do I just know that you would have thought highly of the Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain?

In 1915, when he left the Cabinet but while he still was a sitting member of Parliament, he returned to his Regiment, said Regiment being on the Western Front in France. He served in a front line unit for almost a year. In 1940 he urged his countrymen to take pistol lessons. He kept a 6 inch .45 Colt revolver close at hand.

That’s a bit more than “a smattering of fighting” that you gainsay.

Of the 3 wars in American History with the largest casualties, the Civil War, World War 2, and World War 1, the country was led by Presidents who had no combat experience. Only one, Lincoln, had any military experience. Roosevelt’s greatest job was hiring George Marshall who hired everybody else. Chester Nimitz, who turned down the Pacific Command in early 1941, was told by Roosevelt in late 1941 to go to Hawaii and not to come back until the war was over. Nimitz used Plan Orange, a plan that was devised by the Naval War College in 1923, a plan that laid out the road map that ended in Tokyo Harbor on September 2, 1945. Wilson hired Pershing and didn’t second guess him when it was still considered smart to have infantry attack 5 miles of machine guns. His failures came not in war making but, rather, in peacemaking.

General Eisenhower led 10,000,000 men in combat. Eleven months and 2 days after invading Western Europe Germany surrendered. [Incidentally, D-Day was June 6, 1944. I mention that in case you’ve forgotten it and because my wife’s father, Lt. Cdr. Walter Chapman, was there as an active participant.] Eisenhower was highly decorated by this country and its allies. One of the decorations he did not wear was the Combat Infantryman’s Badge. It is given only to men who have come under enemy fire. Eisenhower never was.

As a matter of fact neither was Margaret Thatcher nor was Golda Meir nor was Queen Elizabeth the First.

Lady Thatcher managed to cobble together an invasion force of 15 ships and 8,000 men over a long weekend and dispatch them on a 7,000 mile trip to the Falkland Islands. They returned triumphantly.

Golda Meir never flinched when it came to signing the butcher’s bill when it was presented to her. She allowed Israeli artillery to all but level Alexandria. When Israeli athletes were slaughtered at Munich she took the adage Nolo me tangere cum impecunis to heart. She specifically authorized the formation of Israeli hit squads to track down the assassins and kill them. It took 3 years before that bill was stamped Paid in Full. She brooked no nonsense about waterboarding, due process, or rights of the accused. She said if you kill a Jew a Jew will kill you.

It is doubtful if Queen Elizabeth the First ever went aloft to set some sheets on the yardarm. That didn’t prevent her from hiring Drake to handle the Spanish Armada in 1588.

These 3 ladies had zero combat experience and no military experience. That didn’t prevent them from doing their job when the tocsin sounded.

Grant was a hard core combat veteran of the Mexican War. He did one thing superbly well. He led men in combat. That’s why he is on the $50 dollar bill and not McClellan. McClellan was known as the “Boy Napoleon”. He excelled at getting his men killed with nothing to show for it. In 1864 he ran for President with the support of the Democrats and the New York Times. He and the editorial board opposed the war, opposed Grant, and vehemently opposed Lincoln. Lincoln, by the way, was regularly called a “baboon”. Sherman, Grant’s good and great friend and leader of the first “surge”, was thought to be from a different planet. And to think that some people think that History doesn’t repeat itself.

As to Grant’s Presidency I have come to the conclusion that he was more sinned against than sinning. One thing he did that other administrations could have learned from was to make everything available to any Congressional investigations. His memoirs are a delight to read. He was far and away the best prose writer of any President. That he had Mark Twain as a copy editor couldn’t have him either.

You say that Grant’s administration was “inept”. For me the standard, the benchmark, the template for ineptitude, was the Carter administration. He set the bar so high as to discourage other competitors. The man couldn’t find his ass using both hands. He was graduated from the United States Naval Academy with a degree in civil engineering with a concentration in nuclear physics. He later served on a nuclear submarine. He couldn’t get 5 helicopters in a row to work in Iran. So much for military experience as a prelude to command.

You end by saying that President Bush “shouldn’t have been in the same room with the decorated veteran John Kerry”. President Bush served in the Texas Air National Guard as a pilot. He was criticized for not serving in Vietnam. Another candidate for the Democratic nomination for President in 2000 did the same thing. Senator Bill Bradley served in the New Jersey Air National Guard as a wing wiper. This enabled him to continue his day job with the New York Knickerbockers as a small forward or 2 guard. Did you level any criticism at him then?

There is one thing that every person mentioned in the above has in common. I can find no record of any of the named individuals saying that they “loathe the military”. People who have seen combat generally loathe war. But as Plato said, “Only the dead have seen the end of war”.

Nowhere, beginning with Herodotus and Thucydides, can I find someone saying that “I loathe the military” and then wind up commanding an army.

If President Bush shouldn’t have been in the same room with Senator Kerry President Clinton shouldn’t have been in the same area code with Senator Kerrey, Senator Dole, or Senator Inouye.

Why do I just know that you never mentioned this?

Maybe because I read History.