I'm watching 'Frontline' about the Berlin Airlift

[Oeditpus Rex]

and I'm thinking, with all the "freedom and democracy" we've brought to Iraq and all our "wonderful accomplishments" there that the Lib'rul Media refuses to report, have we come anywhere close to what was done in 1948-49?

Ultimately 278,228 flights were made and 2,326,406 tons of food and supplies, including more than 1.5 million tons of coal, were delivered to Berlin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Airlift#The_Berlin_Airlift

[RamboLiberal]

1. And Jim Webb's Dad was one of those flying in the Berlin

Airlift.

Both sides of Mr. Webb's family have a strong citizen-soldier military tradition that predates the Revolutionary War. Mr. Webb's father was a career Air Force officer who flew B-17s and B-29s during World War Two, cargo planes during the Berlin Airlift, and was a pioneer in the United States missile program. Colonel Webb, who was the first family member to finish high school and who graduated from the University of Omaha in 1962 after 26 years of night school, put the first Atlas missile into place for the Air Force in the late 1950's, and held an unsurpassed success-rate record as commander of an Atlas, Thor, and Scout Junior missile squadron during the early 1960's. During the Vietnam war he served at Air Force Systems command on sensitive satellite link programs and as a legislative affairs officer in the Pentagon, leading him to become a vocal critic of Defense Secretary McNamara's leadership methods and causing him eventually to retire from the Air Force, partially in protest of the manner in which the Vietnam War was being micromanaged by the political process.

http://www.jameswebb.com/about.htm

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

2. what channel?

I have half a dozen different PBS stations and their all on Masterpiece Theatre or a biography of Milton Friedman.

[Oeditpus Rex]

3. KQED in San Francisco

It's over now, though.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

8. thanks,

I will have to tivo the replay overnight,

I did a big project on the Berlin airlift in university, so it has always been a point of interest.

[Oeditpus Rex]

10. Ever see the movie?

"The Big Lift."

It's dramaticized, but it has a lot of archival footage.

[Kagemusha]

4. I don't think DU'ers would approve of the US spending that kind of $

on mere foreigners in war-torn countries when there are needy Americans.

[Oeditpus Rex]

5. That isn't the point

The Wregime and the Freepers scream, "What about all the good we're doing?" Yet, we've done nothing anywhere near real humanitarian efforts.

[puebloknot]

6. And why didn't they stage a much simpler airlift...

...in New Orleans?

What have we become?

[Ken Burch]

7. New Orleans isn't a front in the Cold War.

And this administration would never think it was as important to save African American Democrats from homelessness and starvation is it would have white German "anti-Communists".

[Lydia Leftcoast]

9. Also, it was a different time

The people who ran the occupations of Germany and Japan actually believed in democracy instead of seeing the occupations as opportunities for plunder.

[Oeditpus Rex]

11. Well, yes — but

our government also understood that actually helping a former enemy rebuild would go a long way toward installing air bases and missile sites in their countries.

The concept of détente is lost on these philistines.

[puebloknot]

12. Responding to all of you who answered me...

I'm aware of all that, and my comment was intended to be a bit ironic.

We've come a long way, Baby, and it's been downhill pretty much all the way. There were offers from other countries to help us with NO, but Bushco was too proud (and maybe too delighted at the suffering of "those people" who probably didn't vote for him) to accept the help.

All your points are well made. Thanks!