Letters to the Editor
Reality-based Liberal
Published Letters: 774 Editor's Choice: 100
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Yeah, what about policy?
[Read the article: The Democrats' foreign (policy) wars]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Agree with the other posters who point out that there is no consideration of what book the frontrunners are singing from -- and I agree that it isn't too different from Bush's.
Bush has won by changing the contexts. Now the "liberal" party agrees that preemptive war is okay; now the "liberal" party has signed on to an endless, bullshit "war on terror," now the "liberal" party supports bigger war budgets and unilateralism. None of the frontrunners say they will increase the role of the U.N., none promise a more humble US policy, none acknowledge that the rest of the world should have any say in what we do (while asserting we have the right to tell others what to do).
It's a permanent Bush administration on foreign policy. The only difference is that the Democratic frontrunners, if elected, will be much better at selling it. Great.
Also agree with the poster who pointed out that Shapiro made his analysis work only by ignoring the 25 percent of candidates who don't fit (with Kucinich out-polling Biden, Dodd and Richardson in Iowa).
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Jumping in on Human Rights
[Read the article: Joe Klein: Both factually false and stuck in the 1980s]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Not trying to answer for Paul, of course, but I think Glenn asks an important question.
I would say that we should support self-determination/human rights even if we don't like the government, and that doing so makes us safer. The example of the Taliban is an excellent one: the US opposed a not unpopular, secular socialist government in Afghanistan (albeit supported by USSR) that supported women's rights and public education; we opposed it by arming a radical collection of people that didn't hate socialism, but hated the rights agenda of the socialist government in Afghanistan -- that group became the Taliban. So Glenn's very example is a defense of Paul's assertion. The Taliban was an undemocratic regime helped into power by the US for "security" reasons, and now we are fighting an expensive war with our offspring.
Ditto Saddam, who we backed in the Iran-Iraq war, and to whom we sold components for biological weapons. Ditto Iran, whose democratic government we overthrew for strategic reasons, only to have the people revolt with the current fundamentalist government. Ditto the Soviet Union, which we pushed from reform-minded Gorbachev to Russian/oligarchy mob rule -- with rusty nukes. Ditto Qaddafi. Ditto Noriega.
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Re: ondelette
[Read the article: Joe Klein: Both factually false and stuck in the 1980s]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I agree that the socialist government was not democratic (sorry if I implied that), and you provide lots of information I didn't know. My point was that the US armed the Mujahideen who opposed the social aspects of the government, and that without our military support for the Mujahideen, Afghanistan may have had a much more moderate government and the Taliban may never have come to power. We backed a future enemy for our "security."
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Oh come on...
[Read the article: Dodd, Huckabee want answers on McClellan charges]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This administration is so bad at PR that I am amazed they have any public standing.
Dana Perino:
"The president has not and would not ask his spokespeople to pass on false information."
What a truck-sized hole. If Cheney ordered people to lie and told President Bush he told people to lie, would Bush violate Perino's standards by doing nothing?
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Clintons do want to have it all ways here
[Read the article: Was Bill Clinton "opposed" to the Iraq war "from the beginning"?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]While there is disagreement here about whether Clinton has a loophole with her vote ("I didn't know he'd do it!"), there seems to be general agreement that she and her husband have made the tactical decision to favor wiggle room over leadership (supporters call it smart politics, detractors call it politics as usual).
What bothers me is that the Clinton tactic to straddle every fence is ultimately right-wing, because all the fences in 2007 have been built by a right-wing media and political establishment. War or sanctions. Big tax cuts for businesses or little ones. Totally privatized government aided retirement programs or partially privatized ones. Deregulation or status quo. None of these fences border my property, and that of a large plurality or majority of voters in many cases.
I guess this is all to say that if Hillary and Bill Clinton triangulated the hell out of Bush's war, the in the smartest way possible given politics at the time, that in no way commends them to me. The moral issues was simple: Bush had proven himself to be a lying piece of shit before 9/11 (remember he was at 55 percent just months after his election), and no responsible person would have put such a momentous decision in his hands alone (especially given what a low threat Iraq was by all credible reports at the time).