MORE DUST

I have received some interesting comments on my last blog. Among them a few that excoriated Mr. Trump for his harsh words for Mr. Kahn.

Trump is not a politician. His reactions and comments sound more like what you might hear in the locker room at the golf club than commentary on public radio. Like it or not, it’s sort of the way ordinary guys talk.

Democrats, of course, and the liberal media, are aghast at Trump’s tweet about the Kahn speech. So are a lot of silk stocking Republicans who delight in “tisk-tisking” everything Mr. Outsider has to say.

It seems like nobody is ready to excoriate Mr. Kahn for parading his personal grief for political purposes. Or Hillary for inviting him to do so. By now, of course, the Trump campaign has gotten the word out that Mr. Kahn has some personal economic irons in the fire as a staunch supporter of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and all the lesser federal bureaucrats that he has to deal with in his immigration law practice.

Still, there is no public outcry, no elitist “tisk-tisking” about Mr. Kahn’s political grieving.

Six years ago, I wrote a blog entitled Whose War Is It? Here is the link to it: http://oldjudge.blogspot.com/2010/10/whose-war-is-it.html

The gist of my essay was that the soldiers who were fighting and dying in what had then become Mr.Obama’s war in Afghanistan were predominantly young men and women from small towns and from red states.

Now I ask this question: What would the media and the tongue clickers have to say if Mr. Trump hosts a round table TV interview with a couple dozen  grieving gold star parents? 

I can see it now on the pages of the New York Times and USA Today:

“How dare he use the sorrow of the relatives of brave young American soldiers for his crass political purposes!!! For shame! For Shame!”

Politics is nothing but a down and dirty war for the hearts and minds of the American people. Almost 70 % of them have no college degree and the vast majority have only a high school education.

They may be unsophisticated, but they are not stupid. And they know when they are being hustled by emotional pitches. The Democrats use of a gold star parent to lob a dig at Donald Trump was crass and inexcusable. If Donald Trump declines to respond in kind, he should be given kudos for decency and restraint in the political mud puddle.

If he doesn’t: if in fact he “out gold stars” the Hillaryites, and twangs the heart strings of the silent millions on the other side of America’s TV screens, who could blame him?

If, after all, politics is a war for the hearts as well as the minds of the great unwashed, why not pull out all the stops?

More importantly, from my perspective, is why we do not stop and ask ourselves; Who is fighting and dying for America?

And who is best suited, most determined and truly able to put an end to the handcuffed military dawdling in the Middle East that continues to swell the ranks of gold star parents in America?

I submit that it is not the woman who is the proud heir to the man who has presided over the Travesty in Arabia for the past eight years.

Bernie’s folks are fond of chanting “No More War!” There are only two ways to get out of a war: Either win it, or lose it.

We won World War II, we successfully defended South Korea; we lost the War in Viet Nam. We won the first and second wars against Saddam Hussein. We’re not doing any better in Afghanistan than the Russians did.

I have no idea how to go about winning a war against anything as ephemeral as “terror.” But it may just be possible, with the help of the civilized world, to conquer the Islamic Caliphate in Iraq and Syria.

Let’s hear the candidates talk about that issue.