Letters to the Editor
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Published Letters: 246 Editor's Choice: 22
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Wars Should Be Fought Out Of Necessity, Never Out Of Expediency
[Read the article: McCain's Vietnam obsession]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]And when the decision has been made to go to war, the whole of society needs to be mobilized for a quick victory, including higher taxes and rationing. No supporting the troops by going shopping crap. Aggression pursued half-heartedly is bound to fail. In hindsight, it would have been far cheaper to invade Iraq with four or five times as many troops as were used, who would then have been able to secure all the ammo and weapons caches, insure public safety, and protect vital utilities. The fact that McCain seems willing to pursue the stupid Bush/Cheney policy of bleeding our military, treasury, and the Iraqis for decades to come shows his true incompetence. He learned nothing from the Vietnam war if he cannot see the ultimate waste and futility of the Iraqi occupation.
I've been opposed to this fiasco since it was first proposed and think the best thing to do now would be to load our troops onto planes and ships and get the hell out of Iraq. The warmongers who started this cursed thing ought to be held accountable for their crimes in an international tribunal. If McCain is elected and pursues the indefinite occupation policy, he should join Bush, Cheney, Rumsfelt, et. al, in the docket.
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Too Many People, Too Few Resources, Too Much Environmental Damage
[Read the article: The Great Depression: The sequel]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You can regulate or deregulate financial markets all you want, but none of that is going to change the fast-approaching Mega-Depression. The planets overall economy (not just its financial economy, but it's resource and environmental economy as well) is like a full bus powered by a worn-out lawnmower engine. Too many people being supported by limited and dwindling resources such as fossil fuels, fresh water, and commercially mineable minerals, added to an atmosphere damaged by greenhouse gas emissions and soot,is a sure formula for economic disaster.
Economists have traditionally made assumptions about the Earth having an unlimited supply of resources and an unlimited capacity for absorbing waste. Most of the letters here do not factor in the planet-wide stresses that threaten to knock the underpinnings out of any conventional economic management scheme. Until the connection of economic well-being to ecological well-being is made and drastic action is taken, I see little hope of averting the Mother Of All Depressions.
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The Enemy Is NOT Eastasia or Eurasia
[Read the article: The Associated Press fails to reveal Mukasey's favorite color]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Party operatives like Mukasey keep beating the drum of fear and hate directed toward external enemies. It has proven very successful in distracting the public and the compliant, corporate-controlled press from the truth that the real enemies of liberty under the law are those who seized power in the 2000 coup against constitutional government.
From Mukasey's point of view "truth" is any assertion that serves the continuance and expansion of his client's power. Hence, the bald lie about the then-current FISA provisions having been responsible for the government's inaction to stop the 9/11 attacks is consistent with this "truth".
Compared with Mainstream Media newspapers, magazines, and TV, bloggers like Glenn Greenwald have a minuscule audience. Michael Mukasey's fibs will certainly not be challenged in any major media outlet and Congress, the body with a constitutional responsibility to discipline the executive and judicial branches through the impeachment process, has already given the Bush/Cheney cabal the green light to distort, trounce, and shred any part of the truth, the law, or our traditions of governance.
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What Terrifies You?
[Read the article: The central front in the "war on terror"?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The things that terrify me are only tangentially connected with Al Qeda and Islamic extremists. High on my list of terrors is that the United States will permanently lose its status as a "free" country, that we will all be under virtually constant surveillance by government and corporations, that our elections will continue to be shams, that our elected (or "selected") representatives will fall further under the sway of lobbyists, that our chief executive will continue to style himself as an authoritarian "decider", and that our media will continue to be more exclusively propagandistic rather than critical and informative. I consider this threat to be several thousand times more likely to happen than an invasion of the United States by radical Islamic forces.
Very close to this terror of the atrophy of our democratic institutions is the terror of social dislocation consequent to the declining availability of cheap petroleum. Our food production and the physical infrastructure supporting our economy is based on the ready availability of cheap energy. I do not see the political leadership of this country embracing the magnitude of this looming crisis or mobilizing our resources to meet it.
Instead of addressing the very real terrors that face our nation as a whole or the terrors many of us face in relation to personal issues, such health insurance costs, we find our attention and wealth diverted into chasing will-o-the'wisps in a land that is literally on the other side of the planet. We need someone to stand up and point out the folly of the "terrors" we have been told to fear, but which are in fact almost inconsequential, and focus attention on those concerns that really do threaten our culture and our lives.