What undue comfort columnist Don Robinson takes in the honey-tongued words of John McCain’s presidential concession speech (“Recalling brilliance of McCain’s concession,” July 27).
This is the same McCain who oh so eloquently crowed “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb” Iran to the tune of the chorus of the Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann” on the campaign trail in 2007.
If Professor Robinson is so taken with McCain’s pretty words of concession, he must have been in seventh heaven over Barack Obama’s well-scripted and exceedingly smooth rhetoric as he served as nothing more or less than a screen for the (oh yes, that old cliché) military-industrial complex.
It will take more than well-meaning flowery language to rescue this country from the Bush/Cheney junta of 2000 that truly gave birth to the United States we live in today. As our politicians wax eloquent, their policies have resulted in untold casualties in the cauldron of the Middle East as they have, quite unconstitutionally and illegally, invaded sovereign nations and destabilized the entire region (not to mention the blowback the West itself now lives with).
That this is the “new normal” is no excuse for taking solace in empty political posturing, no matter how well spoken. A retired professor of government should be well aware of this.
Stephen Hartwell
Easthampton