Letters to the Editor
calbears
Published Letters: 124 Editor's Choice: 1
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the "Arab" factor
[Read the article: Why Bush hasn't been impeached]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Kamiya is right on the money, but there is part of the collective psyche he doesn't discuss that matters to why we can't bring ourselves to demand Bush's impeachment for impeachable offenses. This is the "Arab factor," and the media is an extremely important player in this part of our collective psyche. The "Arab factor" is the racial one, that is, the fact that it is not just an Arab country we attacked but a country whose admittedly brutal leader spoke for "Arab" causes. The US has been trying to impose its double standards on the Arab world for a while, and that force has mostly held, except for the blow to it on 9/11. It doesn't matter here that al-Qaeda isn't really an Arab cause, doesn't have an Arab ideology (Arabism is fundamentally secularist and nationalist); that's "our" mis-interpretation, because it fits with a historical echo chamber of cultural commonsense about Arabs--who they are, what they want, etc.
Now that we've attacked Arabism, certain unintended consquences have followed, which we are likely to find more daunting than our prior enemy. But make no mistake about it. That this was an Arab country and that no one in the U.S. administration ever uses the word, "Arab," to talk about Iraq is not an accident.
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They don't represent anyone
[Read the article: Chris Matthews gets it wrong -- again]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Chris Matthews gets it wrong. Andrew Sullivan gets it wrong. They get it wrong, because the degree of solipsism in the Washington D.C. press corps is unprecedented. While D.C. political discussion has been insular, the degree of social, financial and political traffic between the DC press corps and the government and its point of view has gotten busier over the past 6 years. The Bush administration seems to have been successful at inculcating the mainstream media with the sense that media and government must go hand and hand during times of war, even when the war is illegally conceived and with bizarre consequences. Thus, the shallow level of discussion on any given station on any given evening on any given subject. It doesn't matter if the topic is Iraq or JFK. Distraction rather than trenchant inquiry and expose is par for the course with few exceptions.
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oh dear someone said something critical about Israel
[Read the article: Spring break in Israel!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Why do the critical comments not surprise me?
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APA needs to step in
[Read the article: Did psychologists help the U.S. torture?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Even if he's telling the absolute truth, this is one person, and he cannot speak for everyone. The APA needs to step in and do something to salvage its reputation due to psychologists involvement in activities related to the "war on terror" that have damaged the profession's reputation.
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Thanks much for this column
[Read the article: Krauthammer's plan to deny Palestinians gas and electricity]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]U.S. mainstream media commentary is so anti-Palestinian, ignorant and lazy when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Their sources are I.D.F. memos and MEMRI, the latter a translation service run by a former Israeli military official. MEMRI is not taken seriously by anyone who knows Arabic or knows Palestinian or Arab politics. It only translates materials that show Arabs in the worst possible light. Yet, U.S. journalists depend heavily on it.
If it was not for alternative media, there would be no real way to understand anything at all about the Middle East. A very good documentary on U.S. reporting on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land. If you have the chance to see it, do so. It does a very fine job of explaining how the mainstream media works in the U.S. even as it focuses on coverage of the conflict. Once you see this documentary, you will understand why even mainstream "reportage" is tilted toward Israel and thus skews U.S. citizens' sense of the origins and nature of the conflict.
Krauthammer is a racist. Palestinian civilians do not count as "human" for him and thus are not deserving of rights.
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Hezbollah not a threat to the U.S. anyway
[Read the article: Michael Gordon trains his stenographer weapons on Iran]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Hezbollah and Hamas are not threats to U.S. security. Al-Qaeda is. The Bush administration has purposely conflated all three, even though they are all distinct with disparate political agendas.
I'm tired of the media and the Bush administration purposely conflating all political groups in the M.E. they don't like under the rubric of fighting "terrorism." Going after groups and leaders we don't like rather than dealing with genuine threats to U.S. security is how we got into Iraq in the first place and managed to create more threats to U.S. security as a result.
Sy Hersch had it right when he said the NY Times doesn't "get" this adminstration.
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ah yes the apartheid defenders are here!
[Read the article: Israel's Olmert rises from the rubble]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Can't write anything about Israel, period, without its apologists coming in to tell you that you don't know what you're talking about.
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you've nailed it
[Read the article: The political fringe]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Once again, Glenn, you're right on the money. You are my favorite columinist at salon.com. A great writer and analyst. Thanks.
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Good answer to anonymous on Feinstein's being Jewish
[Read the article: Dianne Feinstein, symbol of the worthless Beltway Democrat]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Excellent analysis and good choice of Feinstein to underscore your point, as she is supposed to be representing a liberal constituency, and she doesn't. Your right to trace it back to Clinton whose strategy of triangulation shifted the Democratic Party to the right.
Anonymous insinuated that you were feeding "anti-Semitism" or at least something untoward along those lines, because you have written articles that criticize the role of pro-Likudnites in the shaping of U.S. foreign policy. THAT and not your noting of Feinstein's ethnicity as part of why she doesn't have presidential ambitions (and she doesn't) is why anonymous targeted you. If you hadn't written the articles criticizing the current Bush administration's ties to radical Zionists in the U.S. and Israel I don't think you would have heard from her or him.