Letters to the Editor
Holly McLachlan
Published Letters: 541 Editor's Choice: 3
-
Political Science = one of the most repulsive oxymorons in academia
[Read the article: War advocates like Anne-Marie Slaughter demand that you forget the past]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'll start by offering a metric for how to assess any candidate -- and any expert's -- plan for Iraq...[ensuing itemized certitudes omitted] -- Slaughter
Needless to say, this line wasn't where she started.
I didn't see that she even bothered to "demand" that we forget the past -- she simply never stopped assuming that she has the natural right to opine on the matter of Iraq. And on a fundamental level, she does have that right -- just like every other semi-aware adult human. What she doesn't have, or shouldn't have any longer, is the credibility to do so and get her imprecise, butt-covering opinion published in widely read journals or websites like HuffPo.
Given her very high stature she will probably be able to make these sort of Very Serious pronouncements in popular political venues until a few years before she dies of (very) old age. But, Glenn is right to be disgusted by the thoughtless hubris that lies just below the surface of her entire piece. Too many of the 'little' guys who went to Iraq based on the political pronouncements of people like Dr. Slaughter will never have the opportunity to dodder into irrelevance 30 years from now.
-
McCain has been singing a variation of the same song for a long time
[Read the article: Journalists, McCain and the false Iran/al-Qaida link]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]One of my strongest memories of McCain from the 90s/Clinton era is of him speaking on a TV panel show with a couple other Very Knowledgeable Personages about the then pressing question of going into the Balkans.
He was against it -- and was using the (legitimate) argument that 'they' had been fighting these tribal wars for centuries, and that we weren't going to be able to stop them without getting mired in the Balkans foreveh.....
His argument was almost the perfect opposite of the arguments he has used, and uses today in defense of active military meddling in the Mideast. He's unlikely to make the argument in public that we must be there to defend our national interest and access to petroleum -- but even if he did 'fess up and admit to realpolitik aims he couldn't support them with data.
Our military has been entrenched in the heart of the Middle East for +5 years, and the cost of running our economy just keeps going up. Iraq has been a strategic disaster -- an utterly perfectly example of what he then insisted the Serbian campaign would become.
I wish I remembered the show and could point to a link or archive. It was a great illustration of McCain promoting the Republican political viewpoint for strictly domestic political gain against Democrats.
He still does that. It's all a Great Game for an Important Person like him. And he will drive the American empire into default without the slightest hesitation.
-
Bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri are not in our prisons, they have not faced the ICC -- they are scot free
[Read the article: The ongoing exclusion of war opponents from the Iraq debate]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]* ..."War is bad because people get killed." End of discussion. What else are you going to say to fill up airtime?
...Oh, that killing secular dictators in the Middle East diverts our resources from killing the ideologues who directed the 9-11 attacks from Afghanistan ~1000 miles to the east? The fact that we are going backwards in Afghanistan is virtually never discussed in the MSM. The Charlie Rose show would be a prime venue in which to bring it up again.* Why would it have been better to gamble, that Saddam has no weapons, no bad intent, and is just posturing?
In retrospect, yes. More to the point, the might and power of the U.S. military and intelligence establishments should have remained fully deployed in Afghanistan until we got Bin Laden and his inner circle.* If said gamble is wrong ten,hundreds, thousands, millions of American lives are in jeopardy. Why isn't that a concern?
As mentioned in the Globe and Mail, our physical jeopardy is not new. I made it alive through the Cold War in a nation that did not dissolve into public hysteria every week over the latest boogyman du jour. I'd like to still live there.*...The willingness to leave the country "defenseless" after a life-altering terrorist act is not a position that can be taken seriously. Ergo, no interviews.... for neocon apologist -- who used the 9-11 attacks as an opening to divert American resources away from our national interest in Afghanistan, who have greatly damaged our standing in the world, and have devalued our dollar, who have exposed our federal government as incompetent to run an occupation in a strategically critical part of the world. Fine. I can accept that idea.
Why are you willing to lie down for Bin Laden? Really, shooter242, why? Sadam is dead, and the men who orchestrated the 9-11 attacks are not. Their continued existence is the fault of those who took us away from Afghanistan, away from the borderlands of Pakistan, and into the heart of the Mideast.
-
Gotta love that high-mindedness....
[Read the article: The ongoing exclusion of war opponents from the Iraq debate]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Once again, Shooter puts a little blood in the water, and the Piranhas start their feeding frenzy. -- Chris Sinnard
Sometimes it's worth it. The itemized lies he posts in comments are not unique products of his own squirrely little mind -- they are rightwing talking points -- tropes that are regularly trotted out to derail discussions of our foreign policy. The practice of refuting them is occasionally worth it.
Sorry to bore you though -- we should be more careful given the care you always take to avoid thread jacking derailments...... of course.