Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson   Red Bluff Daily News   9/02/2014

Attackers devoid of truth, shame

As we resume normal Internet access, and the ability to peruse these pages, there are three items requiring my response. The first is a simple correction to the name of the slain young man in that altercation with police Officer Wilson in Ferguson, MO. His first name was “Michael,” not “Jason.” Absent Internet sources for verification, and with only marginal radio reception, my memory did not serve me well. One of my emails to the editor associated with the column asked for the names to be checked but that didn’t happen. By the time I realized my error, it was too late to even phone a correction in, so the wrong first name appeared for “Michael Brown.” Otherwise, I stand behind all other statements and opinions that I wrote last week. I’ll happily correct an occasional mistake but small-minded, antagonistic critics will have to do better than that to “prove” me wrong on the issues.

While it is often wiser to ignore epithets hurled my way rather than dignify them here, there are some that rise, or rather descend, to a level of offense demanding refutation. Most readers have little or no awareness of the regular issuance of “the North State Voice,” by Cliff Larimer, emailed to recipients. It is often a good, but rather cynical and caustic, read on the numerous topics and news items that come to his attention. While my name turns up occasionally, it is, as I said, not worth dignifying with any sort of response. As I went through literally hundreds of items in my Inbox, his August 29 issue described me thusly: “a Tea-partier with a strong racist bent.”

I’ll put it this way: To call someone a racist is the equivalent of using the “n-word” when referring to African Americans, the way I see it. It is such a despicable, unfair and disingenuous lie that it ought to be legally actionable as defamation or libel. I believe it is used in mostly irresponsible ways to attempt to stifle another’s free expression, and for someone of Mr. Larimer’s journalistic background to stoop that low reveals to any fair-minded person more about his character than mine. I harbor no ill will for any group of people, save those who reveal their own idiocy through foul-minded expressions and prevarications. Moreover, Larimer never once spelled my name properly, using “Poulson” in place of “Polson”; the correct spelling is easily discoverable by simply reading the Daily News or its online equivalent. It’s sad, in my opinion, for someone of his background to resort to name-calling, ad hominem attacks and, well, lies.

Finally, a line of argument that has been hurled my way by one Mr. Hogan for about as long as I have been writing this column (over 9 years), surfaced on this page and I want to provide some perspective. The argument goes like this (in case you missed the letter last week): He offers to pay my way to Iraq so I can do the fighting myself, since I have supported America’s military in past columns. The point is absurd in every respect and, due to his incessant and offensive emails on that and other topics, I have banned him from emailing me, which request he ignores, prompting me to delete his messages unread. He has used the term “sand (n-word)” to describe middle-eastern people as well, which term I prefer not to even read.

It behooves me to point out that he intentionally misquoted what I said when he wrote that I, “as he often does, called for military action in the mid-east.” That I did not do. Anyone can plainly observe what I pointed out: America’s military have remained in every country in which they have fought in order to, as I said, “secure peace in the midst of potential instability. That prevents subsequent chaos and bloodshed requiring going back into a country like Iraq.” Nowhere did I “call for military action,” only that “chaos and bloodshed” might not be stopped without further American efforts. Some would say that we broke it (Iraq) so we own it (the chaos and bloodshed). Remember, President Bush left Obama a relatively peaceful and stable Iraq with, yes, enough troops to keep it that way—not many of them were dying in action by then, either.

The last time I looked we’ve never had an active military leader as President—the Commander in Chief is always a civilian and every time our military is deployed, it is at the direction of a civilian President and a Congress composed of civilians and inactive veterans (mostly). Democrats in Congress insisted on voting a second time for war in Iraq so they could be on record supporting something that Americans, when polled, supported.

I just read recently that a civilian, non-veteran President Obama continues to keep American troops and advisers in Iraq and has deployed Special Forces into harm’s way to assist some of the refugees. He’s happy to take credit for spending tens of millions of dollars to launch air strikes against the Islamic terrorists while he vacations in Martha’s Vineyard; no military assets are being deployed at my direction or encouragement. What disasters befall the people in the Middle East are on Obama’s head and skinny shoulders alone. He’s the one who refused to keep a residual force of 20,000 soldiers in Iraq, which is what military commanders (not 63-year-old, non-veteran pontificators such as myself) were asking for to “secure the peace.”