When I was in the U.S. Army in the 1960s, one of the most persistent exhortations from my superiors was: “The only good communist is a dead communist.”
Our job, we were told during basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, MO, and even during my advanced training in signals intelligence (SIGINT) at Fort Devens, MA, was to annihilate or neutralize as many communists as possible.
I still feel that way about communism and its near-beer companion, socialism. To me, they are one and the same: failed political and social systems that have killed more people on this planet via purges, forced labor, executions, famines, and overt genocide than all of the fascist and monarchial governments combined.
According to the Black Book of Communism, nations like the People’s Republic of China, North Korea, Cuba, Cambodia, Vietnam, and the defunct Soviet Union, with its East European Warsaw Pact satellite nations, were responsible for the deaths of an estimated 150 million people in the 20th century alone.
So why, I must ask, is the Democrat Party shifting toward the most lethal, undemocratic, and authoritarian political system on earth?
Why are Democratic lawmakers in Congress rushing to support avowed communist Zohran Mamdani for mayor of New York, the world headquarters of capitalism?
If you are one of the misguided communist or socialist members of the House, you might ask: Why not?
Think about it, if Mamdani is elected, he will not be the “enemy at the gate” of capitalism, he will be communism’s ultimate sapper—a lethal intruder capable of trashing from the inside the economic system he and leftist lawmakers so despise.
For those who may not know or believe what Mamdani’s views on capitalism are, during a recent interview on CNN, he was asked: “Do you like capitalism?”
His response was immediate and to the point: “No, I have many critiques of capitalism. And I think ultimately the definition for me of why I call myself a democratic socialist is the words of Dr. King decades ago. He said, ‘Call it democracy or call it democratic socialism. There must be a better distribution of wealth for all of God’s children in this country.’”
Distribution of wealth? In other words, it’s the old communist mantra of: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
What irony. What hypocrisy. Mamdani and his parents are part of America’s affluent 1% with a net worth estimated at least $10 million. The family amassed its wealth through capitalism, even as Mamdani’s academic father, Mahmood Mamdani, became rich by promoting Marxism.
Meanwhile, Mamdani campaigns in working-class neighborhoods, and his father specializes in fringe “postcolonial” studies and openly endorses communist Marxism.
When I joined the Army, John F. Kennedy, a consummate Democrat, was president, and his views on communism were unequivocal. He hated it. It was JFK, after all, who, in 1962, stood up to the Soviet Union and Nikita Khruschev during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
“Communism has never come to power in a country that was not disrupted by war or corruption, or both,” Kennedy once said.
The Kennedy doctrine on foreign policy included the containment of communism as well as the reversal of communist progress in the Western Hemisphere.
As a member of the U.S. Army Security Agency, my unit was part of Kennedy’s containment doctrine. Our unit monitored and gathered SIGINT (Signals Intelligence) from the Russian and East German forces entrenched on the eastern side of the old West German border. We knew almost down to the company level where each Russian and East German unit was at any given time.
I can recall standing near the West German town of Fulda, a strategic Cold War “choke point.” It was here, in the so-called “Fulda Gap,” that the U.S. Army assertively expected the first battle of the next war to start. It would be a major clash of American and West German armored forces on one side and Russian and East German armored forces on the other.
The Fulda Gap was known as the ‘Hottest Spot of the Cold War.’ There was no point more fragile, no place more at risk, no area more obvious when it came to potential starting points for World War III.
“If World War III begins, it’s going to begin here,” a staff sergeant from the Seventh Army’s V Corps told me near Observation Post Alpha.
To say the troops on both sides were “nervous” is a gross understatement.
Observation Post Alpha was the only place on the planet where large numbers of American and Soviet forces were stationed within hundreds of yards of each other. Two ideologies and trigger-happy armies separated only by 400 yards of barbed wire, fortifications, and mud.
“This place keeps you scared shitless,” the Sergeant told me. “We’re just dead meat out here, and those Russians and East Germans over there are the meat grinder.”
Indeed, the two American infantry divisions and one armored division in the Fulda Gap were nothing more than sacrificial tripwires that would ignite World War III. The brass knew that Russian and East German troops and tanks would overwhelm U.S. defensive positions.
I spent three years wondering if the Russians and East Germans were ever going to storm over the border and introduce us “capitalist lackies” to Karl Marx.
They didn’t, and I went home confident that we had done our job holding the line against the hostile commies.
How strange it is for me, and I imagine thousands of other American troops who faced off against those communist forces in the Fulda Gap, to find that one major political party in our nation has decided to embrace the failed ideology that we once kept in check and that most Democrats have, at least publicly, opposed since the end of World War II.
How bizarre that the Democratic Party has allowed socialists and communists to gain control of their party so that several blue states and cities are now ruled by the very communist and socialist ideologues that hundreds of thousands of us were ordered to contain or obliterate in places like Korea, Vietnam, and Germany’s Fulda Gap.
Was it all for naught?
It will certainly seem that way if the glib and cunning communist Mamdani worms his way into 226-year-old Gracie Mansion—the official Upper East Side residence of the NYC mayor.
How could any sane New Yorker vote for an antisemitic communist who equates white Americans with colonialism, imperialism, systemic inequalities, and historical injustices?
How could the city’s white electorate send Mamdani to City Hall when he writes that America “is a nation built on institutional racism,” and remains “a place rife with white privilege and pervasive male whiteness?”
This is classic communist doctrine that seeks to divide us into competing tribes centered on race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, and affluence.
Affluence?
Yes, Mamdani says he wants to “shift the tax burden from middle-class homeowners in the outer boroughs to ‘richer and whiter neighborhoods’ if he wins the election in November.
And don’t get me started about the NYC police, a group he has threatened to defund so he can send unarmed mental health workers to domestic violence calls.
I find myself wondering how long those who fought communists during more than half of the 20th century will remain silent as socialist/communist ideology perpetuated by America haters like Mamdani and communist Democrats continues to invade and subvert our schools, colleges, political institutions, social organizations, and media.
As for me, if New Yorkers vote for this unapologetic communist, they deserve what’s clearly in store for them: A city facing financial ruin, racial conflict, crumbling infrastructure, and rampant crime.
I can already hear that great sucking sound as outraged New Yorkers abscond to red state havens like Florida, Texas, or Tennessee.
Good luck, Big Apple!
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