Letters to the Editor
Jim White
Published Letters: 1093 Editor's Choice: 15
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Illegal?
[Read the article: USA! USA! USA!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Near the end of the manual, it is clear that they know the difference between "Official" and "Political" events and are careful to delineate:
Events
While on the road, you will encounter two classifications of events: Official and Political. Official events are those that the President is participating in on behalf of the Administration. These may include Education, Welfare, Defense or any topic on which the President is introducing or advocating an issue. All costs from these events are handled by OA, regardless of the source of payment. Your OA Representative will be responsible for payment for all costs associated with the event, such as sound, light, staging, pipe and drape, bike rack, etc. It is extremely important that you collect invoices from vendors as soon as possible, allowing you and the OA Representative to review the invoice for inaccuracies and validity.
The OA Representative handles no part of and is not responsible for any cost incurred for a political event. Political events are those held on behalf of a particular candidate or office holder and typically involve fundraising activities. Federal law prohibits OA Representatives from having any participation in such events.
[My transcription; C&P doesn't work from the pdf file.]
OA refers to the White House Office of Administration.
How can it be legal for federal funds from OA to be used to fund an "Official" event, yet for the event to be open only to attendees pre-screened for loyalty?
Someone needs to file a whistle-blower and/or class action lawsuit. If federal funds support an event, surely it must be illegal to bar attendees based on political views.
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Curtailing the pursuit of endlessly mighty force
[Read the article: The enduring myth of Americans' dislike of investigations]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]ondelette,
I would extend your point by referring to the text of bin Laden's October 29, 2004 video [http://tinyurl.com/yrg66u]:
All that we have to do is to send two Mujahedin to the farthest point East to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al Qaeda in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human economic and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits for their private companies. This is in addition to our having experience in using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers as we alongside the Mujahedin bled Russia for 10 years until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat.
By continuing to expand and expend the military, Bush is playing directly into bin Laden's hands. Attacking Iran would be a bonus bin Laden (and Haliburton) could only dream of.
The lesson of the demise of the Soviet Union must come into play in the discussion you advocate. I would argue that the rapid military expansion the Soviets undertook to "keep up" with Reagan's expansions played just as large a role in their demise as the Afghanistan debacle, but the point remains the same.
Putting a lid on growth of our military after ending the current series of mindlessly aggressive actions wouldn't just create a chance to lead the world into a new phase of peace, it likely is the only path that prevents the USA falling into the same dustbin with the Soviets.
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More "analysis" from Brookings
[Read the article: Ending the war vs. supporting the troops]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Todays's Washington Post Op-Ed from Carolos Pascual and Brian Cullin of the Brookings Institution actually begins on a note suggesting that they will have some real insight. The first two paragraphs:
When Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker report next month on the results of our "surge" in Iraq, the most important category, political progress, should receive an F. Even if our military forces have made real progress of late, their sacrifices will have been for naught because our diplomatic strategy has been disconnected, anemic and ineffective.
The importance of diplomacy is rooted in Iraq's sectarian civil war. The war in Iraq is not the United States against a single enemy but the United States interjecting itself among many enemies fighting each other. That war cannot be solved by military means. Even if the United States were to quell the violence in the short term, fighting would erupt again with an American withdrawal. Until there is a political compact among Iraqi parties, endorsed by neighbors and the international community, there will be no prospect for peace in Iraq.
The rest of the piece degenerates into a quagmire of "nuanced" suggestions on a path of political progress.
Missing from their analysis is an acknowledgement of the biggest obstacle to political reconciliation: Bush.
The irony of the surge strategy is that the military surge has been suggested as necessary to provide the breathing room to establish the political negotiations necessary to move a unified Iraqi government forward.
I have seen no surge advocates point out the futility of Bush and his henchmen advocating negotiations. For Bush, "negotiation" simply consists of putting out, in advance of any meeting, an extreme list of points for total capitulation for the other side and then washing his hands of the entire process when it predictably fails to get off the ground. For examples, see his "negotiations" regarding Iran, Syria and Congressional subpoenas.
So far, the various Iraqi "government" factions have followed Bush's lead closely in their negotiations, as witnessed recently by the Sunni walk-out when their list of demands was not met.
Our military has done what it can in Iraq. Let's hear from some "analysts" who will start from the premise of withdrawing American troops as the first step in decreasing the violence. Maybe with that as the backdrop, some of the Pascual and Cullin remarks might actually begin to have relevance as we discuss a strong UN role and a meeting of nations with a vested interest in the future of Iraq.