Tough guys no pals to us

Did a shipment of BC Bud just arrive in Colville? Maybe some ergot in the rye? It must have taken something psychoactive to come up with the lunacy in Jeff Hall’s rant, “Another ally abandoned” (Letters, Feb. 19).

Carter and Obama leftists? I wish. Then again, the Birchers considered Eisenhower a commie. And current wingers consider riding bicycles a U.N. plot.

But weeping for the shah? Really? The ayatollahs’ 1979 takeover was the direct result of the 1953 CIA coup that deposed Mossadegh (and democracy). The man’s gall, thinking Iranians should control their own oil. The shah and his SAVAK torturers were not our friends. They were our thugs. Damned expensive too.

Is “another staunch U.S. ally” now gone? Not so much. Mubarak was just another expensive thug. Egypt’s real ruler since 1953 has been the military. It still is.

I guess one $5 trillion war in Iraq and another quagmire in Afghanistan isn’t enough. I suppose Hall wants us to enforce the Bush Doctrine. He’d send troops to Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Yemen, Algeria, Libya, Djibouti, Iran, Wisconsin. Oh, don’t forget the Schwinn factory. (No, not in Chicago, Reagan shipped it to Taiwan.)

Walt Kloefkorn

Springdale