Posted on 09/22/2001 7:41:30 AM PDT by Stallone
His enemies nearly have ceased to argue against the validity of his message in the face of evidence that has emerged during the last decade confirming his message of communist influence and infiltration in the government and culture during the early days of the Cold War.
Why bring this up now? In conjunction with an event the world little noted McCarthy's speech to a Republican women's fund-raiser in Wheeling, W. Va., half a century ago. It was there that the senator from Wisconsin waved a document and proclaimed, "I have here in my hand a list of 205 [State Department employees] that were known to the secretary of state as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping the policy of the State Department."
The Associated Press surveyed some of Wheeling's influential citizens to see if they would be celebrating the anniversary of McCarthy's first mention of what was to become the "Red Scare." Most of those contacted were only too happy to let the event slide by with a minimum of fanfare.
But AP did locate Douglas McKay, who was in the audience when McCarthy spoke. McKay thought the resultant crusade was a good thing because it forced its targets "to defend themselves rather than advance their socialist ideas."
If that is so, and the society and government we have today reflect only the aborted version of those ideas, then conservatives might want to doff their bonnets in a salute to ol' Tailgunner Joe. Things could be worse.
LOL. Whatever you say Joe, whatever you say.
I'm seeing an attitude that I'm mentally labeling "the assumption of stasis" which suggests that people think that if communism, or socialism, or Islam, or whatever, is simply left alone and not meddled with by proponents of capitalism, or democracy, or whatever, it'll stay self-contained and be a good neighbor, and any negative effects come from the interference in its stasis. But I'm with Frost: Good fences make good neighbors.
We would never have even heard of Bin Laden if we hadn't trained and financed him to defeat our communist enemy.
Nonsense. Bin Laden was one of thousands who were trained to beat back the Soviet invasion of Afganistan. He was no one special at the time... just another Saudi who went there to fight. His roots of hatred for the US are based in our positioning troops in Saudi Arabia to fight Iraq. So you could say if we had not stopped a mad man from Bagdhad intent on mass murder, we would not be dealing with another mad man intent on mass murder.
Except for the slight detail that he was a multi-millionaire. The Gulf War was about oil. What was our backing of Afghanistan about?
We did not install any government in Afghanstan. When the Soviets pulled out the various factions we had supported took to war with each other. Civil war is the natural state of affairs in that country and it was historically tribal. After years of fighting, the Talaban now has control of about 90% of the country and that is only within the past few years. We did not install or support them in any way.
Question. Why do you continually attempt to find reasons why this is somehow our fault? Can't you simply accept the fact that there really are bad guys in this world and they will be bad regardless of what we do?
It was a card played to help bring about the collapse of the Soviet Union. It's served its purpose. Now, it's time to take out the trash.
And what exactly does that have to do with it?
The Gulf War was about oil. What was our backing of Afghanistan about?
Very simplistic, in fact childish view. It was not the oil, but the power that oil brings with it. If it were only about oil, we would have done nothing to stop Sadam from taking over the entire Persian Gulf and having all the oil. We get less than 20% of our oil from that region. We could easily have been like Switzerland and found a way to make business deals with him. We could have bought it from him just like we buy it from others. He likes money too.
The problem we had was the prospect of a tyrant like Sadam controlling both world oil prices and having a nearly unlimited source of cash to finance his military plans. Keep in mind, he is the guy who dumped chemical weapons on his own people. He would have done the same to anyone in the region that resisted him.
Do you really think it would have been a good idea to sit back and allow him to do what he wanted in the Mid East? Was Munich a good idea in 1938?
Supporting the Afghans in the 80s was about coming to the aid of a country invaded by the Soviet Union. Afghanistan had been a friend and ally of the US throughout the cold war and supporting them in a war with the Soviet Union is what we should have done.
Where did you get that idea? What support have we ever given the Talaban? The did not exist as an organization when we were aiding the Afghan resistance. They came to be only a few years ago when the Pakistanis got tired of having the trade convoys heading for Central Asia ripped off by various war lords and bandits who controlled parts of Afghanistan. They financed and armed the Talaban to protect their commerce.
But keep trying. I'm sure as this thread gets longer, you'll find a way to blame all this on the Founding Fathers.
Antonio Gramsci.
We didn't create Bin Laden, your leftist blame-the-victim spin notwithstanding.
Nor was our opposition to communism irrational.
My problem with McCarthy is that his excesses permitted the Left to seize the moral high ground, and to bludgeon conservatives with shrill accusations of "McCarthyism" whenever we opposed them. But the threat McCarthy identified was, and is, quite real.
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