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Mr. Johnson has appeared in my sights before. I believe he was a doctor, although his content and logical skills do not always seem to be consistent with that. However, in this letter he and I actually agree on some things. Read on.
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(The other thing about the death tally is the fact that every sort of death that could be remotely connected to the war is included, things like lack of healthcare, food, and medicine because commerce had been interrupted, deaths caused by terrorists themselves, friendly fire, etc. Again, I did not support the war, so I have no intention in justifying the deaths.)
had 32,230 injured (not including PTSD), killed 132,000 civilians, spent $1.7 trillion (More like $758 billion) putting us into serious debt and have a Congress that wants to pay for it off the backs of the poor and middle class. (We were already in serious debt. A commensurate sum has been spent on bailouts and shovel-ready jobs, none of which has helped the economy at at all. As far as who is going to pay for it, well, the poor have no money. We all are going to pay for it. The weight of the debt inflicted upon us has far reaching economic effects. From my perspective, it doesn't matter what the source of the debt is. It is free spending politicians who are to blame, and they are also to blame for the continuing bad economy, saddled by enormous debt and invasive government regulation.)
We preach noble values, yet we sell the most arms in the world, have seldom met a dictator we couldn’t support (until they turn our weapons against us), and strike first at the hint of a threat. (Hmm. Note the multiple uses of "we," as if "we" are somehow to blame and not Obama. In his outrage at the Syrian situation he managed to prominently mention Bush, Agent Orange, the atomic bomb, and napalm. But he cannot bring himself to mention Obama more than once, and that to offer a weak objection to the President's planned Syrian response. The bulk of his letter is about Bush and the Iraq war, previous atrocities, and the economic cost of war. This is classic leftist thought process; deflect, obfuscate, and divert outrage to other events and people so as to minimize damage to their heroes.)
Jerrold E. Johnson Bozeman
Since Vietnam 50 years ago we have found ourselves in one quagmire after another with our pre-emptive war strategy. I support Obama and feel he is trying to do the right thing, but I don’t support engaging Syria militarily. (At first a lot of leftists were silent on the issue. The customary hysterical invective from the leftwing activists was nearly non-existent. Then after a while, some leftist pundits began a timid opposition. More have joined their ranks, so that there is enough of Obama's traditional allies opposing him that he abruptly decided to belatedly seek congressional approval. Mr. Johnson also gives tepid condemnation of a potential invasion of Syria.)
I do give him credit for being cautious. After 9-11, George W. Bush made a hasty decision (America invaded Iraq on the 19 of March 2003, 2 1/2 years after the World Trade Center attack. Hasty?)
to invade Iraq when it was not involved with the terrorist attack, (That's a pretty broad statement. Al Qaeda was responsible for the WTC attacks, and Al Qaeda was and is in operation in Iraq, as well as many other middle eastern countries. Why we attacked Iraq is a matter of conjecture, since there were a lot of factors at work. This is not to say I supported the invasion, because I didn't. I am simply objecting to the generalization made as if it is a stark fact.)
said “Mission accomplished” six weeks later and we left Iraq almost nine years later in a mess. For our tragic 9-11 loss of 2,996, we caused 89,000 direct deaths, lost 4,488 of our young men and women, (here is a chart of deaths per month up until the US began its pull out in December 2011. You'll note that deaths continued to pile up during the Obama administration, and persist even to this day. This only means that Mr. Johnson is apparently unable to separate the deaths that occurred under Bush's watch from those of Obama. Obama was terribly slow in taking action to get out of Iraq, so any protestations about Obama inheriting the situation are mitigated by the lack of immediacy on Obama's part.)
I do give him credit for being cautious. After 9-11, George W. Bush made a hasty decision (America invaded Iraq on the 19 of March 2003, 2 1/2 years after the World Trade Center attack. Hasty?)
to invade Iraq when it was not involved with the terrorist attack, (That's a pretty broad statement. Al Qaeda was responsible for the WTC attacks, and Al Qaeda was and is in operation in Iraq, as well as many other middle eastern countries. Why we attacked Iraq is a matter of conjecture, since there were a lot of factors at work. This is not to say I supported the invasion, because I didn't. I am simply objecting to the generalization made as if it is a stark fact.)
said “Mission accomplished” six weeks later and we left Iraq almost nine years later in a mess. For our tragic 9-11 loss of 2,996, we caused 89,000 direct deaths, lost 4,488 of our young men and women, (here is a chart of deaths per month up until the US began its pull out in December 2011. You'll note that deaths continued to pile up during the Obama administration, and persist even to this day. This only means that Mr. Johnson is apparently unable to separate the deaths that occurred under Bush's watch from those of Obama. Obama was terribly slow in taking action to get out of Iraq, so any protestations about Obama inheriting the situation are mitigated by the lack of immediacy on Obama's part.)
(The other thing about the death tally is the fact that every sort of death that could be remotely connected to the war is included, things like lack of healthcare, food, and medicine because commerce had been interrupted, deaths caused by terrorists themselves, friendly fire, etc. Again, I did not support the war, so I have no intention in justifying the deaths.)
had 32,230 injured (not including PTSD), killed 132,000 civilians, spent $1.7 trillion (More like $758 billion) putting us into serious debt and have a Congress that wants to pay for it off the backs of the poor and middle class. (We were already in serious debt. A commensurate sum has been spent on bailouts and shovel-ready jobs, none of which has helped the economy at at all. As far as who is going to pay for it, well, the poor have no money. We all are going to pay for it. The weight of the debt inflicted upon us has far reaching economic effects. From my perspective, it doesn't matter what the source of the debt is. It is free spending politicians who are to blame, and they are also to blame for the continuing bad economy, saddled by enormous debt and invasive government regulation.)
The sanctimonious oratory about deaths from poison gas has a hollow ring when comparing 1,000 deaths to 100,000. (Oops. Did he intend to talk about Obama in this disparaging way? He does not name Obama, but Obama has talked in this very manner.)
There is no way to make one death in war “nicer” than another. Is it better to get shot, blown up, napalmed, nuked, bombed, or stabbed than poisoned? When we used the atom bomb we killed roughly 200,000 civilians and many died from radiation — not illegal so far as I know. We used poison gas Agent Orange despite 5,000 scientists saying no. We sprayed 1/7th of Vietnam affecting 5 million peasants and 200,000 U.S. military, causing 400,000 deaths and 500,000 children with birth defects.
There is no way to make one death in war “nicer” than another. Is it better to get shot, blown up, napalmed, nuked, bombed, or stabbed than poisoned? When we used the atom bomb we killed roughly 200,000 civilians and many died from radiation — not illegal so far as I know. We used poison gas Agent Orange despite 5,000 scientists saying no. We sprayed 1/7th of Vietnam affecting 5 million peasants and 200,000 U.S. military, causing 400,000 deaths and 500,000 children with birth defects.
We preach noble values, yet we sell the most arms in the world, have seldom met a dictator we couldn’t support (until they turn our weapons against us), and strike first at the hint of a threat. (Hmm. Note the multiple uses of "we," as if "we" are somehow to blame and not Obama. In his outrage at the Syrian situation he managed to prominently mention Bush, Agent Orange, the atomic bomb, and napalm. But he cannot bring himself to mention Obama more than once, and that to offer a weak objection to the President's planned Syrian response. The bulk of his letter is about Bush and the Iraq war, previous atrocities, and the economic cost of war. This is classic leftist thought process; deflect, obfuscate, and divert outrage to other events and people so as to minimize damage to their heroes.)
Jerrold E. Johnson Bozeman
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