Letters to the Editor
William Timberman
Published Letters: 3298 Editor's Choice: 7
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Regrets
[Read the article: Why Israelis believe they're right]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Maybe the shtarkers should have thought of this back in 1967, when, as the stronger of the two parties, they could actually have made peace. Contempt for one's adversaries may be comforting in times of strength, but it's never a wise long-term strategy.
The father of a friend of mine, a pious Jew born in the old Austro-Hungarian empire, used to say of Zionism that once Jews had a state like the Goyim, they'd begin to behave like the Goyim, and that would be bad for the Jews. An old-fashioned man, Mr. Guttman, but a wise one.
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In few words
[Read the article: Joe's fall from grace]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]A brilliant summation of why Lieberman was called Holy Joe, and why voters who knew about his history in detail rejected him.
Sad, but he was the one who voulunteered to go out in a thunderstorm and hold up a lightning rod. No one asked him to. If only our disputes with Republicans could be made as clear as our dispute with Joe, but that would require that Karl Rove be as tone deaf as Joe's handlers.
Time will tell, I guess.
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Indeed we did
[Read the article: Rod Dreher: "Hadn't the hippies tried to tell my generation this"?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Well, here we are. I suppose you can consider this a test. No URL links -- that strikes me as a very great difference from our old habitat. Ah, well, La plus ça change....
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From the Old to the New
[Read the article: Giving Democrats a pass on ending the war?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I thought, since I'm here, I might as well duplicate my comment this morning from the old Unclaimed Territory. Consider it a test, if you like, and my apologies if the comment archives are transferred later, and this duplicates my earlier post.
WT
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The problem with the Democrats is that they don't have an alternate narrative. If the war in Iraq is an aberration slowly become an abomination, what exactly is America's role in the world? Ask them, and you won't get a single answer.
Most Democrats in the House and Senate seem to accept the post-War narrative which their Party in fact invented -- America on guard against and finally triumphant over World Communism, America the guardian of world peace and democracy, America the ardent defender of the defenseless Jewish state. They question the tactics which put us in Iraq, but not the strategy.
Even many of the rank and file, the Democrats I worked with as volunteers during the last election, for example, believe that we're at war with irrational terrorists, that it is a war, and that GWB just sent the troops to the wrong place. They had/have no problem at all with the Iraqi sanctions, Clinton's air war against Saddam, or stationing troops in the stans on Russia's southern borders.
To put it plainly, the Democrats who have a fundamental criticism to offer of American foreign policy, and the economic policy which accompanies, it are a minority. You find many of us in places like this because our narrative has to be heard here first; it has little place in the councils of the Party at the moment.
The same was true during the struggle over civil rights, and during the Viet Nam debacle; the vilification of Fannie Lou Hamer, or Eugene McCarthy was every bit as debilitating then as Joe Lieberman is today. To this day, many Democrats blame us for the present weakness of the party. If you radicals hadn't split the party, Hubert Humphrey would have won, and the war would have been over in six months; if only you'd been more responsible.
If we want a true opposition to American Manifest Destiny in this country, we'll have to create one, and we'll have to win elections with it. The Democratic Party may be the more hospitable of the two parties to those who actually have an alternate narrative, but only just. These things take time.
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Michael Gordon Is Mistaken
[Read the article: Michael Gordon, the administration's best friend at the Times]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Unfortunately, we know all too well how journalism works -- his kind of journalism, at any rate. You write what you know is fine only if you know anything, but if you don't know anything, you're supposed go find out, aren't you?
If you insist that you're above going and finding out, the management of the NYT is also supposed to fire you, aren't they? That they don't, and why they don't is, alas, no mystery to anyone either.
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Unclaimed Territory on Salon
[Read the article: Michael Gordon, the administration's best friend at the Times]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Well, for what it's worth, I think the layout here is very elegant, and the commenting software is both easier to use and much more reliable. I have to admit that I'm not so fond of the need to page through the comments to read them all, though. When you come late to a thread, it takes a bit more time to read everything, but on the whole, I prefer Salon's layout to the old Blogger one.
I think that the portrait is a nice addition, too. (I was a bit annoyed when Vanity Fair reduced the size of Wolcott's caricature when they assimilated his blog. I don't know why, I just like the idea of a personal signature on personal essays, I guess.)
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Not Necessarily
[Read the article: Michael Gordon, the administration's best friend at the Times]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The idea that anti-armor shaped charges require the sophistication of a high-tech weapons industry to manufacture is utter nonsense. They can be made in any relatively well-equipped machine shop, using designs that've been around since World War II.
Thanks to our benighted neocons' lack of foresight, which allowed Saddam-era weapons stockpiles to be looted early on in the occupation, there are also ample supplies of detonators and high-impulse explosives available to power them. To repeat what a commenter said here several days ago, it requires a stunning feat of cognitive dissonance to accept that in a country which four years ago the neocons deemed capable of producing nuclear weapons, there'd be any shortage of people capable of designing, manufacturing, assembling and deploying a simple armor-penetrator.
So I say again, never mind Michael Gordon; just how dumb does Dick Cheney think we are?