Letters to the Editor
Elephantman
Published Letters: 1312 Editor's Choice: 15
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Effie; nice story --
[Read the article: Brand-aid]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Naturally, I presume that you do your utmost to instruct your impressionable teenage Indonesian students that the U.S. is not a warmongering country, and that the current War on Terror is not a means of waging war on the Muslim world. I'm sure you carefully explain that the nature of the threat that the U.S. faces is described in terms like those of the notable American law professor and civil libertarian, Alan Dershowitz where he writes this in the Wall Street Journal:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120450617910806563.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries
So with that sort of background, it is pretty easy for you to describe the USA as the freest, fairest, most generous nation on earth. Right?
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Ballsee; here is my earnest, heartfelt advice for you and for Obama...
[Read the article: Brand-aid]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]... Please, by all means, run on a platform that America is an evil, rotten, warmongering, rogue state. Publish your list of supposed American atrocities. Get Obama to talk about it. And get that message out there; that Obama is going to fix us up because we have been such a pariah nation.
Good luck in the fall.
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If you don't think that "liberal" is essentially a pejorative in a general election for the Presidency, then I suggest you make yourself happy and run Obama as the happy liberal that he is.
[Read the article: Brand-aid]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]@ Elephantman
"Obama would be the most liberal President in the lifetime of any living American. Let's have a referendum on that."
I'm really hoping that we're getting past the point where the term "liberal" can be used as a pejorative, any more than the term "conservative". Both are simply names of political philosophies, and both are well-intentioned but potentially subject to misuse: and either one can be espoused by intelligent, thoughtful humans.
Personally, I'd be delighted to elect the most liberal President in the lifetime of any living American.
-- dissidenz
This would be an honest campaign. McCain, a true moderate, versus Obama, a true liberal. And, let's not leave it at labels. Let's explore all of Obama's taxing and spending policies, his ideas for judicial nominees, his ideas on the U.S. military and national security. Let's find out how Obama would fight the war on terror; would it be as agressivley as the Bush/Cheney Administration? Would Obama usher in a new era of U.S. protectionism on trade? Is Obama's attitude on immigration to the left of McCain's already-moderate stance? What promises has Obama made to the big unions? Is Obama a 2008 version of Howard Dean, without the scream, and riding the wave of an even better-organized (but decidedly minority) demographic of left-wing net surfers? Like I say, forget personal issues; let's have at those policy issues!
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Ya see, Ballsee...
[Read the article: Brand-aid]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I don't have any hope of changing your mind. I don't care to. There will always be that class of Americans like yourself, the faithful believers of the far left, the 24 percenters who like and believe in the New York Times.
This is such a great country. You're free to say what you like and do what you want to. I just don't think your demographic is going to win many elections. Especially not by claiming, as did John Kerry, that we're a nation that runs on genocide.
We took down the Taliban because it supported and gave haven to a brand of terrorism that threatened our nation. In the wake of 9/11, we took down Saddam because he really was a genocidal maniac who stood in defiance of more UN resolutions than I can count. I happen to think that changing the entire calculus in the middle east is a good thing. There ought to be no room for the likes of Hamas, the Assad crime family, or the tinpot Ahmadinejad in respectable world affairs. I know that you disagree; but my candidate was a two-term President of the United States and yours wasn't. There's the difference.
And now there's another election. And people like you won't decide it. (Nor will people like me.) The people who will decide are mostly the same kind of middle-American voters who swung the last two elections to George W. Bush. If you want to try to appeal to those voters on the basis that the USA is a historically genocidal warmonger, be my guest. I think McCain will try to appeal to a combination of beliefs that America is a basically free and fair and generous country that is entitled to defend its security. That the job of securing Iraq and turning it (and the middle east) to a better future remains incomplete, and that the war on terror is not a simple law enforcement problem. I think that view will win a majority, and the view that America has been the world's great satan will win a small minority.
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I think the authors, and the left, are more caught up in delusional, sanctified thinking.
[Read the article: The cold price of hot blood]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Don Rumsfeld had it RIGHT! He wanted to figure out how to operate the military on a less costly basis. Lighter, with fewer people. More ass-kickers, and fewer typists and food service workers in places like the Pentagon. More and better technological weapons, to find people like bin Laden hiding in caves and vaporize them. Better intellignece, to root out people like Khalid Sheikh Muhammad hiding in Pakistani neighborhoods and whisk them off for unrestrained interrogation. There are always problems in warfare, but I perefer Rumsfeld's vision to these authors' vision.
Naturally, now, these authors will go on a book tour that will feature them on 10 or 12 different NPR and PBS interview programs. The nation's public broadcasting system used essentially to campaign against the current mission of U.S. armed forces. (Of course the left will say, "But we're sticking up for American military personnnel!" However, the "sticking up for them" consists mostly of sticking up for having more of them, with more costly health care, and more benefits, and more low-tech costs. Not killing more of our enemies more efficiently and at lower cost.