This Is How We Win?
Rep. Sheila Jackson is serving her seventh term as the congresswoman from the 18th District (Houston) in Texas. She serves on the Committee on Homeland Security and the Committee on Foreign Affairs, among others.
July 15, Congresswoman Jackson made a statement regarding the war in Afghanistan. Among them was this, um, idiotic statement about the "countries" of North and South Vietnam.
That gaffe has gotten a lot of attention around the Internet. But the actual point of her pontification is even more disturbing than the fact that someone with such a poor grasp of political history and geography is serving on the Committee on Foreign Affairs.
In a statement on her Web site concerning the speech, she attempts to clarify her point. Try to overlook the fact that if this were an essay for an eighth-grade English class, the grammar would rate about a D-minus.
In it, she writes:
America lost 58,000 soldiers [in Vietnam] because the policies followed by our federal government worked against this nation declaring a victory and encouraging the world to work with Vietnam toward being a democratic state and thereby saving the lives of so many Americans...
America must declare victory in Afghanistan and bring our soldiers home.
I'll try to rein in my sarcasm a bit and point out that Rep. Jackson arrived at this stellar bit of strategic wisdom after a weeklong trip "visiting the troops" in Afghanistan. Except, according to the photographs she posted from the trip on her Facebook page, the only "troops" she visited were Gen. Petraeus and his staff.
I beg to differ, Rep. Jackson. You didn't visit the troops, you hobnobbed with a bunch of generals and politicians in air-conditioned palaces. That isn't what "visiting the troops" looks like.
Visiting the troops means going to where the troops are. In Afghanistan, that is a long, difficult and dangerous process.
Here's a photo of me after a seven-hour ride across the desert with the Marine Raiders based at Camp Leatherneck, in Helmand province, where today the temperature is around 115 degrees.
Somehow I doubt Rep. Jackson visited these troops.
In my humble opinion, it reflects very poorly on the city of Houston and on the Congress of the United States of America that such cluelessness is rewarded with seven terms in office.