selling out our allies

The Beaglestonian Institute is surprisingly easy to search.  Just type something into that little box on the upper left and wham there you go.  There is an April 17, 2016 mention from Beagles in reference to Joe being a state delegate for Reagan, and there is a December 26, 2013 post about collecting welfare, and one the next day on the same subject.  I don't recall our exchange back in our email days or me pooh poohing the guy because he didn't appear in the google machine, but I know I have a tendency to be high-handed about these things, and I will hereby apologize to Beagles for my sniffy dismissal.

For a former legislator Joe doesn't leave much of a footprint on the internet.  All I could find was a letter to the editor from November 15, 2017 in favor of football players taking the knee.  I guess this last letter is too new to make it on google.

There are similarities and differences to our treatment of South Vietnam and Taiwan and of the Kurds.  The south Vietnamese government was never a very good ally.  They were corrupt and they did not treat their own people well, and the ARVN was roundly derided as a competent fighting force.  We poured a lot of lives and treasure into that cause and we never had much success and there was no light at the end of the tunnel.  Of course there were arguments at the time that we should have fought harder, but outside of dropping nukes and of killing shitloads of people, it's not likely that they would have changed the course of that war. 

I was thinking that surely we had US troops in Taiwan, but when I looked it up to make sure I discovered that we did not and have not since 1979.  We do have some treaties with them, but I have to say that if I were Taiwanese I would be nervous.  On the other hand I have to say that Chiang Kai Shek was a pretty crappy ally.

Even though the Kurds were fighting for their own reasons they were pretty good allies, and it wasn't like we were losing any lives or spending too much treasure to keep the Turks from attacking them, and it seems like we could have given them a better notice than two or three days.

And Watergate was not a silly thing.  For somebody who claims to venerate the constitution, Beagles seems pretty nonchalant about it being violated.