Letters to the Editor
Amity
Published Letters: 1153 Editor's Choice: 107
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Other Myths
[Read the article: The waning power of the War Myth]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There's nothing wrong with myths, per se. Myths, even national ones, help us understand who we are and what our place is in the world. They are in a sense a kind of roadmap, a way of understanding how to get through doubt and difficulty.
The myth of America the Reluctant Warrior that Gary Kamiya begins to excavate in his article is one among many. The aspect of reluctance bears further examination, and I wish, Editor, that Kamiya had delved more deeply there -- we Americans are complacent to a fault, but a complacent people do not go to war, ever, unless certain conditions have first been met. The lowest achievement of the present administration's art was their ability to manufacture those conditions -- urgency, danger, and injustice great enough to warrant violence -- where they did not actually exist.
But we have other myths as well -- America the Great, which doesn't need to force its will on others but exerts its power by example and through the force of its ideals. America the Good Neighbor, always willing to lend a hand (and a few dollars). America the Nation of Free People, whose citizens accept no law or policy that they did not choose, and reserve their own judgment of all people rather than accept any government's dictate as to who is their friend or enemy.
What's happened to our country that these other myths have grown so weak? Why aren't we outraged at the mere suggestion that our entire nation should undertake gratuitous war simply because our government tells us that's what's best?
We could use more myths, not fewer.
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Who cares whom the Court chose?
[Read the article: Neither was ours]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I've heard that there's no difference between the Republicans and Democrats anyway. In fact, I've heard from a great many progressives, liberals, and other deep thinkers that there's no point in voting in 2008, because Clinton, Obama and Edwards are all the same, and the Democratic Congress is no different from the GOP Congress before it.
You who still care about Bush v Gore clearly need to get with the program, here.
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In the end
[Read the article: Lately I've been kissing women I'm not married to]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Anyone who can look back on their lifetime of marriage with the benefit of hindsight and say that their greatest moments of infidelity were a couple of tipsy makeouts with cute chicks back around the time of their midlife crisis (since the timing is about that, isn't it?) can give themselves an "A", especially if grading on a historical and societal curve.
And anyone's spouse, looking back from a similar halcyon perspective, is going to roll their eyes and think, you know, that certainly could have been worse.
After all, even Jimmy Carter committed adultery in his heart.
The hard part is making sure that there were only ever a couple of these encounters, right? And staying out of the trap of saying, "Well, 'a couple' could mean three.. or several really... what's the harm in one more?"
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Let me get this straight
[Read the article: Bush's new friends: The Sunnis]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]After 5 years of dicking around at the top levels of operational planning, trying to screw up a military occupation by every means known to history, we've now settled on more or less the exact formula the British used -- a formula that led more or less directly to the rise of totalitarianism in Iraq following their withdrawal.
This is idiocy.
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Real Men
[Read the article: The Hillary Clinton Nutcracker]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What's up with this? Real men crack walnuts with their bare hands. Duh.
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By Comparison
[Read the article: Don't believe the surge hype]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Within 5 years after the end of the Second World War, the occupied former Axis nations had been disarmed, their partisans re-integrated into national life, their war crimes documented and most of the perpetrators captured and publicly tried according to the highest standards of international law, social order restored, new democratic governments established, and massive reconstruction projects completed or at least well underway.
There were right-wing proto-fascists in America then, too -- gabs of them, storied and infamous -- and they tried everything they could to halt the greatest achievement of American statecraft, in the name of their own paranoid, xenophobic worldview.
Why did they fail? There are many reasons but the single most significant is that liberals of the day understood the basic principles of democratic society, and were disciplined enough to vigorously defend those principles in national discourse.
And now? Hundreds of thousands dead, and a nation reduced to rubble and terror and ankle-deep in its own blood. Think about that, you liberals, when your noses are in the air and you're refusing to vote because your precious preferred Democratic candidate didn't win the nomination. Think about that in the fleeting moment after you open your mouth but before before you declare once again how little difference there is between the two parties, how it doesn't matter, how you're not going to vote or get involved or any of that.
All of this ruination has happened because of you.
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Should you stay or should you go now?
[Read the article: I let my friends stay with me and now they're evicting me!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If you go there will be trouble.
If you stay it will be double.
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Fairly Straightforward Solution
[Read the article: Brand Petraeus, by the numbers]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Repeal the authorization to invade Iraq.
The commander in chief will have 90 days to wrap up the "heck of a war" that so many liberals wrung their hands over and kinda sorta hoped would be over quickly so they wouldn't have to be bothered to really confront the political establishment or their own leaders.
Three months might be less than ideal and would probably mean blowing up a bunch of our stuff on the way out. But when you're doing dumb things fast, especially dumb things that are killing thousands of people, there's no such thing as "stopping too soon."
Congressional leaders won't do it, though, unless their constituents tell them to, and their constituents aren't telling them to because they're all still hoping in their heart of hearts that there really will be some kind of upturn, that this time the war really is about to magically end, and anyway it's someone else's problem.