NYTimes/Globe Seems Determined to Harm U.S. Troops

The NYTimes/BostonGlobe complex appeared determined to damage as many U.S. troops as possible yesterday, when it ran more major stories about "protests."

It was their forebears who volunteered our young men to be the "policemen" of the world — way back in 1917. Is it too late for us to decline that role now?

Some observers compare the Times/Globe axis to inner-city residents a few years ago, who would heckle and throw rocks at police and firemen who had been called to the area by other residents.

They agree that the Times/Globe should report the protests, but they also say that the newspaper has become a partisan. Yesterday's page one story and picture had a lead paragraph and a headline, "Tens of thousands rally in Boston against war."

Most people believe that "tens of thousands" would mean many more than 25,000, but that is the number that was given below the headlines. Even it appeared to be inflated. There must be many more college students alone within a few miles of Boston Common. There were 2500 supporters of the war in the tiny town of Mashpee on the Cape yesterday.

The Times/Globe is determined to settle our national policies by the number of people that they can assemble in the streets.

The Boston rally appears to have been organized by United for Justice and Peace, a Boston group which was organized after 9/11 and by the professional staff of Peace Action, which has been around for over forty years, previously known as "SANE" and "The Freeze." Both organizations are far to the left of center. A national leader of Peace Action, Brian Corr, was the moderator of the event.

The forebears of the protestors first started to promote "peace" back in 1916 with the election of Woodrow Wilson as the man who would keep this country out of war. He then led us into World War I a year later, as "the war to end all wars."

He was followed by Franklin Roosevelt who won reelection in 1940 on a pledge that he would not send "American boys" to fight on foreign soil, although he was planning to do so all the time. He knew about Pearl Harbor before the attack, many said at the time and most now appear to agree.

But it was Harry Truman who finally made us the "policemen of the world," by bungling us into the Korean conflict. President Eisenhower ended that war and resisted all urgings to send our servicemen to Vietnam after the French lost it. For that, he has been called the "do-nothing" President.

JFK and Lyndon Johnson sent our draftees to Vietnam. The average age was 19-years. We were not on the wrong side, but most questioned whether it was the duty of American boys to be fighting that war and be the policemen of the world.

Because of the peaceniks who changed their minds in the 1960s, after the going got tough, and then ridiculed our 19-year-olds who JFK and Johnson had sent there, there was never any agreement among the American people about Vietnam. And then the Times/Globe attacked Nixon who had inherited the mess and forced us to desert all those people in Vietnam who had trusted us.

Many are concerned that the Times/Globe is repeating their failed Vietnam policy. The Christian Science Monitor has reported those concerns about protestors. A professor, was reported in a Monitor story last week.

"'I don't think any useful purpose is served by blocking [the streets],' says Bill Galston, who directs the University of Maryland's Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy. 'The issues [at hand] are of the utmost gravity for the future of the country, and shrill voices and guerrilla tactics are inappropriate for those issues.' Professor Galston, who opposes the war, recalls how quickly antiwar sentiment during the Vietnam War turned into anti-Americanism, and is concerned that current movement, with some of its more strident factions, could run the same risk. He'd like to see a clearer message from activists, and offers these suggestions: that the movement insist on a serious commitment to decency and democracy in Iraq and that it critique the changed basis of post-9/11 US foreign policy, which appears to suggest that any country who may give weapons to terrorists is a threat to the US - and could be invaded."

But the Times/Globe appears determined to reproduce its Vietnam role again. One 52-year-old woman from Colorado, Patty Grant, who was visiting her daughter, seemed to agree. She told the Globe that she participated in the Vietnam protests as a freshman. Her protesting daughter is a freshman at Emerson.