Letters to the Editor
bloomsbury
Published Letters: 361 Editor's Choice: 5
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Uh oh
[Read the article: Rudy Giuliani's messianic paranoia]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Now here's the problem, shooter 242: you talk about Reagan's doctrine of 'American exceptionalism' and you follow it up by saying 'your question is invalid...' and 'There's nothing to address on that particular point'. I beg to differ.
'American exceptionalism' has led America's foreign policy makers into decisions such as killing leaders of countries America doesn't approve of and invading countries it doesn't approve of and into supporting hideous regimes such as that of the Saudis- all the while proclaiming its democratic credentials. This has been disastrous for America and the world and becomes more disastrous by the day. The hubris that leads the American political establishment to believe it has a divine mission to save the world is a form of insanity, one which Giuliani suffers from. But he's only one man and everyone knows his face. Ted Olsen and the other shadowy figures who share his peculiar mindset are another matter. His wife Barbara is also a somewhat mysterious figure, but anyone who could advocate assassinating Chelsea Clinton so that she couldn't 'carry on the line' was clearly mentally ill. Her place in 9/11 mythology is now much clearer to me. I had no idea she had such close links to all this lunacy. The neo cons are the ultimate expression of the madness of American Exceptionalism and they truly believe that they rule as a manifestation of God's will. People who believe this are capable of absolutely anything because they can justify any action, however immoral, in their own minds as part of a mission from God. In other words they suffer from delusional ideation and their policies (both domestic and foreign) are now so dangerous that their influence can only be broken by keeping their frontmen and women out of office for about twenty years - so that natural wastage will take place- and educating the public as to the sickness and destructiveness of their true agenda.
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Friedman is a misnomer
[Read the article: Tom Friedman and Rudy Giuliani on 9/11]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Ironically 'Friedman' means 'Man of Peace' in German. He's not. Worse still, he lacks all imagination and his insight into human nature seems to be zero. Anyone with a sense of history and an understanding of human nature would have known exactly what was going to happen in Iraq and in Afghanistan
for that matter. All kinds of things may change but human nature never does and a wise 'pundit' will always factor that in. A wise pundit has knowledge and understanding of history and can apply its lessons to current political happenings. Mr Friedman is not a wise pundit and fails the Shakespeare test:
'to thine own self be true'. Lillian Hellman said when called before the McCarthy witch hunt, that she couldn't cut her conscience out of the cloth of today's fashion. Mr Friedman can. Why are mediocrities like him so 'influential'? I suppose it's yet more proof that 'only cream and bastards rise'.
Not only rise but stay around until they're rancid. In 1976, the year of a coup in Argentina that had the support (all kinds including financial)of the US government, Gerald Ford was President, his chief of staff was Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defence was Donald Rumsfeld, assistant to Secretary of Defence and assistant to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq in 2003, almost thirty years later. Unbelievably, some of the private soldiers recruited by the private security firm Blackwater included Chileans who served under General Pinochet and helped him 'disappear' thousands of people. All in all its an extreme right coalition, hell bent on curbing democracy and halting social progress in order to enrich and protect a tiny minority of people against the interests of the majority of the population.The idea that these people have, that governments may come and go but they go on forever, seems to be borne out by fact. To those on the outside looking in the fact that Dick Cheney has 189,000 shares in Halliburton along with 500,000 options should be a huge scandal. The Vice-President is profiting hugely from the war he started. I wonder how Friedman would spin that? Or has he already?
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Disgraceful
[Read the article: Interviews with AP executives on the Bilal Hussein travesty]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What a bloody disgrace! Anyone named Hussein who dared to tell the truth about the Iraq war would be an obvious target for false imprisonment. The charges against this man are non-existent: his only crime was to take photographs that showed what was really happening to Iraqis. There's also a journalist in Guantanamo Bay who seems to be slowly starving himself to death. He's never been charged with anything and no one cares if he dies. It makes you hope there's a hell so that Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and all the rest of them can go there for their crimes against humanity.