David McElroy

As I watch the events unfolding in Afghanistan today, my thoughts keep going back almost 40 years to the fall of South Vietnam. If there had ever been a reason for U.S. forces to be in Vietnam, those reasons had been lost for years before the south fell. If there was any good reason for U.S. forces to be in Afghanistan, those reasons have similarly been lost. Will the fall of Kabul in a civil war be similar to the fall of Saigon?

For more than a decade, U.S. ground forces were heavily involved in fighting in Vietnam. Close to 60,000 Americans died, but the North Vietnamese forces wouldn’t be defeated. The South Vietnamese troops allied with the United States weren’t as effective as the communist troops from North Vietnam. After becoming stuck in a long and bloody quagmire, the American public grew weary of the war.

In 1973, the various sides — North Vietnam, South Vietnam, the Viet Cong and the United States — finally agreed to a peace treaty. U.S. troops left the country, but the other combatants went back to fighting. In late April of 1975, the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon fell — with frantic South Vietnamese desperately trying to get onto U.S. helicopters evacuating the remaining Americans. (The photo above shows Vietnamese going over the wall of the U.S. embassy trying to board U.S. helicopters.)

It was a humiliating moment for the United States. After spending years — and wasting tens of thousands of American lives and untold tax dollars — trying to fight the war, it became clear that the only answer was to cut and run.

It’s time to do the same in Afghanistan. Before another person can be killed who doesn’t have to die, it’s time to get out of that place and let the Afghans fight over their own country.

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My name is David, and I’m a sugarholic.

I’ve battled for decades with an almost uncontrollable craving to eat sweet things at times. For the most part, I make a joke of it, simply because that’s the easiest way to deal with it. If I can’t get it under control, the least I can do is get a laugh about it, right?

I guess so, but I’ve been thinking about addiction a lot lately — of various kinds — and it’s really not funny. We can make an alcoholic into a joke in movies at times. And I can turn my “sugar addiction” into jokes. It’s a good way to deflect attention from the subject. It’s a good way to laugh about the battle that sees my weight go up and down, depending on what’s going on in my life. But it doesn’t do any good in the long run, because laughing about it isn’t filling the need that created the addiction in the first place.

As I’ve started talking about this more publicly, I’ve come to find that a substantial percentage of the people I know suffer from similar addictions. Everybody knows about alcoholics, because alcohol abuse is the most common addiction in the public mind. Fortunately, I never had to deal with that one. I’ve seen alcohol abuse in plenty of other people. I know of at least four people in my family who have had problems with it. When I was a teen-ager, I decided that the potential benefits of alcohol were tiny compared to the potential risk, so I never even started drinking. I think it’s a smart decision.

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I’m astounded at those on the progressive left who claim to champion civil liberties, but then make it obvious that what they really want are liberties for people who agree with them — not for those they hate. Attention-seeking feminist lawyer Gloria Allred is high up on the list of hypocrites.

Those of us who believe in liberty — both economic and social — hope we can count on conservatives on economic liberty and progressives on social liberties, because their rhetoric at least agrees with us in most of those areas. But many in both camps disappoint us — as they make it clear that their objective is to attack people they don’t like, not fight for consistent principles.

Allred said Friday that she’s asking a county prosecutor in Florida to investigate conservative radio icon Rush Limbaugh for called Sandra Fluke a “slut” and “prostitute” on the air. There’s an old Florida law that says anyone who “speaks of and concerning any woman, married or unmarried, falsely and maliciously imputing to her a want of chastit” is guilty of a first-degree misdemeanor.

Although Allred is apparently still a practicing attorney, you have to wonder whether she’s ever heard of — much less read — the case law surrounding the First Amendment.

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