Letters to the Editor
JackSparx
Published Letters: 421 Editor's Choice: 16
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Why Hillary's Lie Matters
[Read the article: Hillary Clinton's tough week]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Here's why Clinton's lie matters: she lied about her Iraq war vote, too.
Now she is faking her war resume as a way to get points with voters.
Hillary has never had to evade sniper fire. But the soldiers she sent to Iraq have not always been able to avoid it.
Like the soldier from Michagan who was an avid kayaker, wanted to be a doctor, and had joined the army to get his tuition paid.
He was killed by a sniper last month while on duty north of Baghdad.
Neither Clinton nor Walsh understand the insensitivity of Clinton's comments. It's the same as George Bush saying he wishes he could serve in Afghanistan.
It's time our war-mongering leaders stop joking about the death and wounds they have dealt to our soldiers.
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Intentions and civil disobedience--an opportunity
[Read the article: Is Briana Waters a terrorist?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I've posted several letters here noting the unconstitutionality of using environmental intention by the government as a (direct or indirect) sentence enhancer or as an excuse for spy techniques.
But the government is handing a new tactic to people interested in real and effective civil disobedience.
Civil disobedience is an appeal to a higher law (like the constitution) or authority (like religious or other moral system) by breaking a lower law. That law may either in itself be a contradiction to the higher law or be a valid law (eg against trespass) that in turn supports the targeted activity. Effective civil disobedience can't really be covert--it depends on people going to jail as a way to pit their consciences against the powers enforcing the targeted law. Skillful civil disobedience puts its people in jail for the smallest offenses that maximally illustrate its cause.
This arson was ineffective in two ways: It didn't really stop the targeted activity. It didn't really focus on attention on the activity. And it required a large offense (arson of an expensive facility) with a moderately small ethical statement.
The government, by stressing the environmental intentions of the arsonists, is in fact doing much of the work they should have done themselves. It is stressing that they were not out for personal gain, but risking their freedom for what they thought was good for society.
But the arsonists are dumb because they never had to burn the building down at all nor serve sentences for arson per se. If INTENTION is itself a crime, then they need only make feeble real efforts to burn the building down. Or, to block its use. They needed to publicize their intentions, make it clear their environmental motivations, provoke the authorities into jailing them for those environmental intentions, and then use the trials and jail sentences as their platforms.
The government, by using language like "ecoterrorism" and unconstitutional methods in pursuing and prosecuting environmentalists is handing those same environmentalists a huge tool. If they only knew how to use it. The model should actually be the tree-sitting protests that worked, not the Weather Underground covert violence that doesn't.
And maybe that's why the feds are targeting Briana Waters for special treatment. They are more afraid of her association with tree-sitters than with arsonists.
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Deaths by sniper fire in Iraq
[Read the article: Hillary Clinton's tough week]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The DOD websites are a bit clunky, but I'm counting at least 48 US casualties specifically attributed to sniper fire since Bush, Clinton, and others started the war there. Considering the type of war, weapons, and opponents, that seems like a lot.
I should have written "a year ago last month" in the death I mentioned, not "last month." I found the story here:
http://archives.record-eagle.com/2007/feb/20iraq.htm
If anyone else is interested in humanizing the cost of the war even as Clinton, Bush, and others try to dehumanize those costs, small town papers are the best place to turn.
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Civil disobedience as civil mediation
[Read the article: Is Briana Waters a terrorist?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]On one hand we have an administration and law enforcement which routinely acts above the law. We have unlimited spying, official lies, unwarranted use of force, indiscriminate roundups, torture, and, well all the rest, including the criminalization of political thought.
On the other hand, we have those who had given up on the system even before 9/11, and who can rightly say "we told you so." The Iraq war was a bad idea. The environment does matter. Trade agreements were not fair to workers or the natural world.
Both of these sides are trapped by their own thinking, and both need the other. The federal government is increasingly illegitimate at home and impotent abroad. Society needs government power to organize solutions that those who sport black bandanas have not managed to achieve, not even in their own backyards.
That's the powerful role of mediation that civil disobedience needs to occupy. There probably hasn't been a greater opportunity for a movement since Rosa Parks kept her seat.
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Obama should sidestep Clinton
[Read the article: Hillary Clinton's tough week]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Obama should directly engage McCain to the convention and beyond. He should not compare his policy and record to Clinton's, but to McCain's. He should not respond to Clinton's criticisms, other than to say that he may respond if McCain makes the same criticisms.
He should use the remaining primaries as platforms to the general election.
Clinton has successfully engaged Obama at her level, mainly through race-baiting. Well, that's over. No more debates with Clinton, no more replies through the media, no more dueling ads. All of his fire should go at McCain. He should be nice as peaches toward Clinton, but nonresponsive and nonsubstantive.
Why?
Because he's already won the nomination.
Because it would force Clinton to join forces with McCain, destroying her chances.
Because it will best impress the superdelegates to focus on McCain.
Because responding to Clinton lowers his rhetoric to her nasty level.
Because it shows that he can frame the debate.
Time to move on to the general, Barack.