Robert Watson, Ph.D. Lynn University

September 25, 2011

Robert Watson, Ph.D.
American Studies
Lynn University
3601 N. Military Trail
Boca Raton, FL 33431

Boca Raton, FL

RE: “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Quaff deeply…” – Some comments on your “Kick me, please kick me” column in today’s Sun-Sentinel.

My dear Professor,

I’ve been away.

The manatee trapping – think low cholesterol sausage for the homeless – season doesn’t begin until Halloween. I’ve scheduled my Obamacare/Medicare cost reduction campaign – senior citizen python wrestling in a single elimination mode – to begin on Thanksgiving. With far too much time on my hands I seek targets of opportunity.

Bingo!

Guess whose ass is in the 10 ring?

#1 – “AMERICANS ALWAYS RALLY AROUND THE FLAG” – They did not fully do so in the American Revolution. They did not do so in the War of 1812. They did not do so in the Mexican War. They did not do so in the American Civil War. They did not do so in World War 2 until the modern American Liberals of the day were shocked, shocked when Hitler, Stalin’s best friend forever, invaded the rodinya. They did not in Vietnam. They did not in Iraq. I wonder where Cindy Sheehan was when this country supported the invasion of Libya.

#2 – “ FEAR IS A POWERFUL EMOTION” – You’re right. You may wish to add “Stones are hard and water is wet” to Watson’s List of really Useful Aphorisms”. Would you retroactively condemn Admiral Halsey, another proud son of New Jersey, for saying “the Japs are lousy yellow rat monkey bastards”?*

No navy in the History of the world was as ferocious and as victorious as the American Navy in 1942. Salamis, Lepanto, and Trafalgar were not 5 carnage filled days combined. Jutland was but a bloody afternoon.

Some portion of this staggering accomplishment – Tokyo to Midway to Ironbottom Sound – has to be attributed to the salutary effects of fear. The later Battles of the Philippine Sea and of Leyte Gulf followed by the invasion of Okinawa were won partly by the fear instilled in the American Navy in 1941.

#3 – “NO ONE POLITICAL PARTY OWNS PATRIOTISM” – True. True. I remember the call to arms issued by Senator John Pastore [D-RI]. He said that when the bad guys “looked down the barrel of the Kennedy/Johnson cannon” they knew that the American people were serious. How did that work out?

#4&5 – “IT IS NOT ENOUGH FOR AMERICA TO BE STRONG MILITARILY” & “A NATION CANNOT FIGHT 2 WARS SIMULTANEOUSLY” - The evidence of your own eyes demands acceptance of the fact that a nation can neither borrow nor can it tax its way to prosperity and power. No nation, anywhere, anytime has ever done so. I search vainly for answer to the poser that asks, if deficits under Bush were bad, why are they good under Obama.

As to the two front war I suggest that you familiarize yourself with World War 2. I had an uncle who went everywhere MacArthur went. I had another uncle who made 3 forced landings: North Africa, Sicily, and Anzio. My wife’s father was 8000 yards off the coast of Normandy on June 6, 1944. She had an uncle who ran convoys to Murmansk. 4 oceans, 3 continents, at least 9 countries.

There is no better definition of a two front war than that.

#6 – “THE OLD CONVENTIONAL, BI-POLAR WORLD” – You end by saying that “America is strongest when it is respected around the world”. I must have missed those lectures. Did Hellenic architecture enable a polyglot collection of city states to conquer the mightiest power on earth? Did Aeneas and Juvenal empower Rome to be able to enforce Pax Romanica?

Is it Ritalin or Thorazine that is the drug of choice for bi-polar disorders? If you are referring to the 45 year dust up with the Russkies, the one that Reagan won without firing a shot, what was the alternative therapy? If Walter Mondale had pushed the 1985 equivalent of the famous RESET button what would have happened?

Was there ever a stronger, more feared, and more respected power on earth than America on September 2, 1945? When MacArthur said, “These proceedings are closed”, he turned to Admiral Halsey and said, “Bill, where the Hell are those planes?” As if by magic 1000 planes overflew the USS Missouri. They blocked out the sun in a way not seen since Thermopylae.

That we chose to give away our treasure and our power is the subject of a different discussion.

#7 – “THERE ARE DANGERS IN GROUP THINK” – Right again. When I think of all the buffoonish Luddite nitwit ohmadans who swear allegiance to the
“settled science” of Global Warming the dangers of “Group Think” are writ large. Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is supposedly “settled science”. After more than 150 years it is still called a theory. Why is that? Just 2 days ago the “settled science” of Einstein was challenged in a way not seen in a century. You may remember that tomatoes were long thought to be poisonous. I’m glad that got cleared up. What would we do without pizza? Wasn’t it “settled science” that the sun revolved around the earth. It didn’t make Gus Ptolemy a bad guy.

If you are referring to “group think” when it comes to war time leaders making war time decisions a different dynamic applies. Information to a war time leader is like water to a garden. It takes a long time to judge the crop. Thus, when President Roosevelt called Governor Warren in 1942 and told him that he was sending him the 1940 Census data to him to help him lock up all the slopes, he was acting on what he thought was the best information available and in the nation’s best interest. One of those conveniently forgotten facts is that in addition to the 150,000 Japanese-Americans interned there were almost 30,000 German-Americans and Italian-Americans also locked up. Their “We’re sorry. We didn’t mean it. Please forgive us” compensation package is, I think, still being negotiated. Compared to the surgeon the pathologist has a far simpler task. Autopsies stop for lunch. Emergency pneumonectomies can’t.

#8 – “Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.” – So what? The Logic that enabled Obama to join in the invasion of Libya is just as compelling as when it is applied to Sadam Hussein. Both were bad guys. Both killed a lot of people. All the world’s intelligence services plus a majority of Congressional Democrats thought he posed a clear and present danger to this nation. There are no mulligans in poker or realpolitik. Are dead American soldiers killed in Iraq – the bad war – anymore dead than American soldiers killed in Afghanistan – the good war?

#9 – “Ten years later…” – Your argument that we have created a “terrorism industrial complex” and that we have “established a monstrous bureaucracy” proves the History does repeat itself. I’ll leave it to you place the nametags of “tragedy” and “farce” on the proper chests.

The longest war in American History, the 48 year war on poverty, a war that we entered into without any stated goals and certainly no exit strategy, and if we are to believe the Congressional Black Caucus, is a continuing failure. The second longest, the war against drugs, is also a quagmire. About the latter at least it can be said that it has created thousands of “shovel ready” jobs. Alas, they are all South of the border. Why don’t we have a peace conference on a joint Oprah/Doctor Phil show and surrender?

Speaking of a “monstrous bureaucracy” what do you think will happen should Obamacare be fully implemented? Think of the best of the IRS, the DMV, and the Post Office on steroids cubed. “Anticipation is the greater joy” is still in force, yes?

#10 – “We were attacked by a handful of radical individuals” – Right again. You say it caused us to “weaken civil liberties and suspend constitutional rights”. Whatever Darth Cheney, the evil puppet master, made Bush do he did not suspend the writ of habeas corpus as Lincoln did. He didn’t arrest and exile a Congressman as Lincoln did.

The problem with the “radical individual” premise is that their forebears did the same thing. If Islam is a religion of peace what were they doing half way across Europe less than a century after the religion was begun? How did the basilica of Saint Sophia become a mosque? Who was Cervantes fighting when he was wounded?

If Camp Gitmo, America’s first Caribbean based adult sleep away camp, is used to recruit terrorists, how did the 20 WOG terrorists get together to kill 3000 people on September 11, 2001? If it so bad why didn’t Salama Yomama, as Senator Lard Kennedy used to call him, shut it down as promised?

The eternal conflict, to cite Burke, is between order and freedom.

There are lessons to be learned from History.

Nolo me tangere cum impecunis still rings true

Maybe it’s time to update Cartago delenda est to Mecca delenda est.

Look at the time! I have to get back to judging my essay contest “Why it is ‘settled science’ that polar bears should drown”.






Kevin Smith