In a recent issue of the Beacon, former Democratic Congressman Pat Williams appears to have engaged in “character assassination” by calling our new president “crude, argumentative, inattentive, inexperienced, and unlearned.” Mr. Williams, apparently upset by the election results, should have applied his resources to helping find a Democratic candidate who wasn’t under a criminal investigation by the FBI! Or one who had not violated the espionage laws of the U.S. Or one who hadn’t taken millions of dollars from foreign governments while serving as Secretary of State for a so-called “Clinton Foundation.” Williams seems to be bothered by President Donald Trump’s supposed lack of foreign policy experience. Perhaps he needs a refresher course on some of our previous Democratic presidents and their lack of foreign policy experience.
JFK. Kennedy meets with Khrushchev soon after becoming president. A Russian aide said Kennedy seemed “very inexperienced and even immature.” Kennedy’s fumbling results in the Cuban Missile Crisis in which he almost involves the U.S. in a nuclear war with the USSR.
LBJ. Becomes famous for escalating the war in Vietnam, resulting in the death of 54,000 American military. What was his foreign policy experience? The poster child for “crude,” his legacy is his incompetent handling of the war.
Carter. The Democratic peanut farmer whose brilliant decisions involved abandoning the Shah of Iran, a U.S. ally, which gave rise to the Islamic terrorist movement we see today.
Clinton. His handling of foreign policy was a catastrophe. He had over eight opportunities to kill or capture Bin Laden but refused to act despite Bin Laden having murdered hundreds of Americans in terrorist attacks around the world.
Obama. Spent three lackluster years in the Senate, after a stellar career as a community organizer, but he was ready for the presidency despite no foreign policy experience. Critics have called his foreign policy decisions the worst in the last 40 years. The Arab Spring becomes a debacle as Obama/Clinton help to topple an American ally in Egypt and turn Egypt over to the Muslim Brotherhood, a terrorist organization. Then the Obama/Clinton team intervened in Libya where they supported the assassination of Gadhafi, and their complicity resulted in the first murder of an American ambassador by terrorists in 30 years. My question to Mr. Williams is, could Donald Trump do any worse than these obviously unqualified Democrats who served in the past?
Lynn Smith
Polson