The biggest single story, so far in the Iraq war, has been the rescue of 19-year-old POW Jessica Lynch. As details emerged, we heard of a daring rescue by elite military units, aided by some brave Iraqi citizens.
But, there’s much more. Jessi, a supply clerk who happened to be driving a water truck that took a wrong turn, got ambushed and went missing on March 23rd. The country girl with the winning smile put up a Hell of a fight, firing on the attackers until she ran out of ammo.
“She was fighting to the death,” a U.S. official told The Washington Post. “She did not want to be taken alive.”
As to her injuries…
“Her broken bones are a sure sign of torture,” said Amy Waters Yarsinske, an ex-Navy intelligence officer and an expert on POW treatment. “It’s awfully hard to break both legs and an arm in a truck accident. Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s thugs are known to use steel bars to bash their prisoners’ limbs,” she said.
Jessi hails from tiny (population 135) Palestine, West Virginia, located in the heart of Appalachia, an area that should be sacred to the memory of all good liberals, for it was in Appalchia that Lyndon Johnson began his War on Poverty. On April 24, 1964, with much media fanfare, LBJ came to Martin County, Kentucky, to visit with Tom Fletcher, an unemployed laborer with eight children, who had earned only $400 in 1963. Fletcher told reporters he believed Johnson’s visit “would bring us some luck.” On August 20, 1964, Johnson signed the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964.
A year later, Fletcher and his family seemed to be doing better. The Great Society had enrolled him to be trained as an auto mechanic by the Manpower Development and Training program, paying him $42 a week. Fletcher bought a cookstove, some furniture, and new false teeth for himself and his wife.
Unfortunately, his long-term prospects never improved. His auto mechanic training taught him only how to change spark plugs, and no job ever materialized. The net effect of the War on Poverty on Tom Fletcher, LBJ’s hand-picked poster boy, was just more disappointment and lots of food stamp booklets. With few exceptions, Fletcher’s story is the saga of the War on Poverty in Appalachia, and pretty much summarizes the real world legacy of the Left’s vaunted social programs.
Even then, it was all about appearances, and how things would play with the elite liberal media. Not much has changed, has it?
You can search the Internet until your eyes fall out, and you won’t find a single word from the feminists about Jessi Lynch. What more could they ask for than a woman in combat, who toughs it out with the best of the boys? Sorry, no time for Jessi. She’s too hick, too patriotic, and not their type. Far better to be rallying around the latest incompetent lesbian assistant professor, who is legitimately not getting tenure. Far better to worry about women being barred from membership in Augusta National. Far easier to concern themselves with the “drawing room” issues that can be discussed over expensive lunches at Yupper Westside hangouts, Georgetown cafés, and Back Bay bistros.
You tell me who’s real: Martha Burk or Jessi Lynch?
And while we’re at it, how about some props for the late columnist Michael Kelly. Not content with being a distant observer of the war, he voluntarily thrust himself into harm’s way, with fatal consequences. Put him up against the effete pencil neck armchair Lefties, or the urban vermin demonstrating in our streets.
Match him up against the pathetic Eddie Vedder, who somehow thinks one can simultaneously support the troops and bad-mouth their commander-in-chief. The Pearl Jam lead singer is no better than Natalie Maines, his Dixie Chicks counterpart. Vedder isn’t fit to breathe the same air as Michael Kelly, and Jessi Lynch has already forgotten more than Maines will ever know about being “country.”
These two pampered, parasitic, show biz poseurs should thank God for Kelly, Lynch, and everything that’s real in America, but don’t expect street cred from street crud.