Letters to the Editor
luckycat
Published Letters: 148 Editor's Choice: 6
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Documentary
[Read the article: The Bill Moyers documentary on our failed and barren press]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]During the run-up to the war, all media (including NPR) appeared to willingly close their collective eyes to the fraud being perpetrated upon the American people. Even at the time, the fraud was obvious to anyone willing to be labeled a traitor. The Administration put forward three justifications for the war: (1) Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons; (2) Iraq harbored terrorists like those who were responsible for 9/11 and/or Iraq supported or was otherwise connected with the 9/11 attacks; and (3) based on (1) and (2), Iraq posed an imminent threat to the United States. I watched and listed with incredulity as no media outlet ever questioned these assumptions. The IAEA had found absolutely no evidence of nuclear weapons development in Iraq, and the administration put forward no credible reason for why the IAEA was wrong. No evidence of a connection between Iraq and terrorists or Iraq and 9/11 ever existed -- any connection constituted complete fabrication for which no factual support ever existed. Absent nuclear weapons or terrorists, no threat to the U.S. existed that could possibly justify pre-emptive war.
The only reporter/commentator that I ever heard or read at the time who made these points was Robert Sheer, then a columnist at the LA Times. As a reward for his critical opinions of the Bush Administration, he was terminated. The L.A. Times now has none other than Mr. Goldberg as one of its regular commentators (I let my subscription lapse in protest).
The problem with reporters and the national media that Glenn very nicely documents in his columns are not the only problem that led to the complete failure of our national media. The Administration, then very popular, labeled anyone who questioned the war or the assumptions underlying the war's justification as bad Americans, traitors, disloyal, aiding the enemy, etc. Just look at what happened anyone who dared to question the Administration at the time (Richard Clark, Christine Todd Whitman, the former Alcola CEO who was Secretary of the Treasury -- name forgotten, the Dixie Chicks, etc.) It would have taken tremendous courage and willingness to suffer both harm to one's reputation and economic disaster to question the Administration or its "facts" at the time. We should all be willing to look at how we, the vast majority of Americans, allowed the Administration to effectively tag anyone who asked questions as "traitors" and look for ways to keep it from happening again.
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Neocons don't believe in democracy
[Read the article: Neocons' rejection of the rule of law extends to the personal level]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]My mom, herself a brilliant constitutional attorney (who died at far too young an age), would spend 15 to 30 minutes every night with us kids talking about some clause of the Constitution. This practice started before we could read and continued through high school. She believed that she had an obligation to make us understand the fragility of our Constitutional system and the various threats to it. While a staunch Republican, she focused on the dangers of extreme belief to our Constitutional system whether on the left or the right. To her, the danger of the left was obvious -- the further left one moves, the greater the necessity that the government redistribute wealth. The more the government redistributes wealth, the more powerful it and the people who run it become. When the government redistributes all wealth, no check on government power exists. And all power residing in one place is always very bad to civil liberties and democracy. On the right, she would explain, a tendency exists for those in power to believe that they are smarter than the general population that they have THE solutions and can run the country better and more efficiently. Democracy gets in the way of efficient decision making -- thus the less democracy, the better. Democracy just gets in the way of efficiency and a better country. Consequently, power concentrated in the far right become just as dangerous to a free and democratic society as a government that collects and redistributes all wealth. Growing up, I never really understood the argument -- how could people at the far right ever believe that democracy is bad for society? Had she lived, I have no doubt that my mother would agree with every word of this article and would no longer identify herself as a Republican. The danger of the current neocon movement to democracy in this country is evident. Few perceive the threat, and even fewer perceive it as real. Kudos to Glenn for voicing the thoughts of those few of us who do recognize and worry about the threat, but don't have the words, time or energy to do anything about it.