Obi-Wan Quixote: The Collected Works Vol. I, Chap. 3 --Letters to the Editor
To: carl_Parameters@conus.army.mil
Cc: president@whitehouse.gov
Re: "The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012", Parameters, Vol. XXII
Dear Sir,
Given the events of the last 36 hours, I felt compelled to inquire as to the status of the article from Parameters, Vol. XXII entitled "The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012" by Charles J. Dunlap, Jr. If you are no longer the contact person for this article please accept my sincere apologies for disturbing you. The cached copy I was able to obtain listed your e-mail address as the address for comments or corrections.
You may or may not be aware of the opinion column by John L. Perry printed on newsmax.com on 29-Sep-2009, and since retracted, entitled "Obama Risks A Domestic Military 'Intervention'". Mr. Perry fantasizes that officers of the U.S. Army might feel compelled to stage a coup against President Obama because he wishes to install a Marxist dictatorship in America. I wished to link to the Parameters article as a way to provide a counterpoint to Perry's opinions. Much to my surprise I found that, alone out of all the links I tried from the Parameters cumulative index for Vol. XXII, Mr. Dunlap's article was offline and redirected to the War College home page.
While I appreciate the sensitivity of this matter, I don't think the persons responsible for deciding to take Mr. Dunlap's "Coup" article offline are doing the Army, the War College, or America any favors. Given the histrionics from the reactionary elements in our society in the past several months, the ideas contained in Perry's column must be examined using all the tools at hand.
Disappearing this article from the Parameters website does not erase it from the Web. The article was in fact last cached by Google on 05-Sep-2009 and that copy is readily available. Not to mention the text has been circulating the Web for at least the last decade and is widely available elsewhere, including on certain unsavory websites that do not reflect the best traditions of the Army the way the War College does.
In conclusion, I therefore urge you to restore the original PDF of "The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012", from Parameters, Vol. XXII to the Parameters website. Removing the article from the website looks more like a tacit admission of guilt than a bold move in support of the current administration. I believe Dunlap said it best in his original preface, "It goes without saying (I hope) that the coup scenario above is purely a literary device intended to dramatize my concern over certain contemporary developments affecting the armed forces, and is emphatically not a prediction."
Sincerely,
PAR,
Lilburn, Georgia, USA
Post Scriptum: For your reference Google Cache links to the two articles in question
"The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012"
"Obama Risks a Domestic Military ‘Intervention’"
cf. "The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012", The World's Lamest Journal, 20-Jun-2006.
Cc: president@whitehouse.gov
Re: "The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012", Parameters, Vol. XXII
Dear Sir,
Given the events of the last 36 hours, I felt compelled to inquire as to the status of the article from Parameters, Vol. XXII entitled "The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012" by Charles J. Dunlap, Jr. If you are no longer the contact person for this article please accept my sincere apologies for disturbing you. The cached copy I was able to obtain listed your e-mail address as the address for comments or corrections.
You may or may not be aware of the opinion column by John L. Perry printed on newsmax.com on 29-Sep-2009, and since retracted, entitled "Obama Risks A Domestic Military 'Intervention'". Mr. Perry fantasizes that officers of the U.S. Army might feel compelled to stage a coup against President Obama because he wishes to install a Marxist dictatorship in America. I wished to link to the Parameters article as a way to provide a counterpoint to Perry's opinions. Much to my surprise I found that, alone out of all the links I tried from the Parameters cumulative index for Vol. XXII, Mr. Dunlap's article was offline and redirected to the War College home page.
While I appreciate the sensitivity of this matter, I don't think the persons responsible for deciding to take Mr. Dunlap's "Coup" article offline are doing the Army, the War College, or America any favors. Given the histrionics from the reactionary elements in our society in the past several months, the ideas contained in Perry's column must be examined using all the tools at hand.
Disappearing this article from the Parameters website does not erase it from the Web. The article was in fact last cached by Google on 05-Sep-2009 and that copy is readily available. Not to mention the text has been circulating the Web for at least the last decade and is widely available elsewhere, including on certain unsavory websites that do not reflect the best traditions of the Army the way the War College does.
In conclusion, I therefore urge you to restore the original PDF of "The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012", from Parameters, Vol. XXII to the Parameters website. Removing the article from the website looks more like a tacit admission of guilt than a bold move in support of the current administration. I believe Dunlap said it best in his original preface, "It goes without saying (I hope) that the coup scenario above is purely a literary device intended to dramatize my concern over certain contemporary developments affecting the armed forces, and is emphatically not a prediction."
Sincerely,
PAR,
Lilburn, Georgia, USA
Post Scriptum: For your reference Google Cache links to the two articles in question
"The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012"
"Obama Risks a Domestic Military ‘Intervention’"
cf. "The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012", The World's Lamest Journal, 20-Jun-2006.