Letters to the Editor
jwr_12
Published Letters: 151 Editor's Choice: 47
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Wild Card: A Terrorist Attack
[Read the article: 2006: Bush's Waterloo?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]As an exercise in somewhat paranoid what ifs, I found this article amusing and disturbing. Amusing, in that it played to my outrage and loathing of this administration. Disturbing, in that it has a distinctly end of the world feel that I hope is not entirely warranted. As bad as this administration is, I can't imagine the entire Republican right wants to suspend checks and balances. I'm afraid if asked to give an example of the polarizing, paranoid, millenial tendencies of the web, I might single out this piece.
But to go a little further down that road, I found it rather strange that the author failed (for reasons of political correctness?) to point to an obvious 'wild card' for the coming year: a major terrorist attack. Consider the following:
1) Al Qaeda's modus operandi has always been to lie low, then strike again. Typically the distance between its carefully planned major operations is several years. (This is, of course, not counting the major splinter groups and new factions that have emerged).
2) The terrorists got what they wanted, politically, last time: a fragmented world, an isolated and wounded United States, and the semblance of a war between Christianity and Islam. Why not do it again?
3) If, therefore, al Qaeda did something as simple as derail a passenger train in the U.S. (not to mention something as devastating as a dirty bomb),it could easily count on more of the same--especially since the Bush administration would surely only use this event to gin up the Global War on Terror again --though the real moral, from my point of view, is their inefficiency in police action against al Qaeda.
4) Needless to say, a huge strike (such as an atomic attack on a U.S. city) could mean the end of the world as we know it: the repudiation of the constitution in the name of security, economic collapse, national trauma, international panic, etc.
Too gloomy to think about? Maybe. But I think we can't leave terrorism off the charts as a likely, and potentially quite lethal, threat to democracy in 2006--caught as we are between the murderous and the corrupt. And while we as citizens cannot do much to stop terrorists--that, alas, is a governmental function--we can try to do something about the corruption, and maybe prepare our body politic to respond more sanely to the violence that may come.
Best,
John
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I'm Paranoid Myself
[Read the article: 2006: Bush's Waterloo?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In a rather spectacular self-immolation, I accused the author of political correctness and then failed to notice that he actually had included terrorism as a wild card. Apologies all around, to the Gods: delete my post! Or damn it to the bottom with negative feedback.
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Democratic Consultocracy and Base
[Read the article: Fear of spying]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Who do the 'democratic' consultants represent? Politicians wanting to get elected (not that consultants have done a very good job at that). But certainly not the democratic party in any of its wings or its whole. And while they undoubtedly feel for the country, they've decided waging the tactically right campaign at this moment is more important than winning the larger war, which, as the Republicans have shown, is about educating the public to think like you do by framing the issues correctly.
I think the Australian voter (whose name I forgot to write down) pegged it squarely: these are people who are shooting for a chance to rise up in the next election cycle, rather than people who are worried about the big picture. And it is becoming increasingly apparent they can't win the elections, even when they engage in tactical silence about things that matter to real democrats.
I am sick and tired, as a democratic voter, of being told that we should not try to be seen as patriots, defenders of the constitution, and people interested in real national security--that's a 'republican strength,' all evidence to the contrary--and focus instead on issues that matter to 'working Americans' (a phrase that always sounds like 'the little people', when uttered by the likes of our democratic talking heads), 'where we have an advantage.'
To use the Americanism, that is total crap! It is condescending, and dubious: if the American people believed that the democrats really were looking out for workers, they wouldn't have abandoned them long ago in droves for evangelical churches and the new GOP. Nor can we expect that we'll have a windfall from the corruption scandal: the Republicans will succeed in making it look like a plague of both parties, both because our manicheean media will report it that way, and because no American thinks that the democrats are somehow immune for corruption.
You have to stand for something to have that kind of moral reputation. And as long as the democrats keep refusing to take moral stands on obvious issues--in the name of winning elections--the democrats will continue to lose elections, and also cede the strategic edge in our time to a greedy, corrupt, fanatical, but less complacent and more determined republican party.
Oh, and one other thing: the 'let's wait it out until the next election cycle' only works if we have elections. But the way things are going, Republican control of our government and the unitary executive are going to push that quaint tradition--de facto, if not de jure--out of our lives.
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Hot for Teacher?
[Read the article: A student has approached me about his crisis of faith]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm afraid that my jaded eye reads this situation a little differently than everyone else. My advice to the younger, approachable Teaching Assitant approached by a sincere young man with doubts about God is: he wants in your pants!