Letters to the Editor
The Voice of Reason
Published Letters: 374 Editor's Choice: 40
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Science is also a belief system
[Read the article: Louisiana schools open to creationism?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The science you believe to be righteous today, will be ridiculed as primitive 100 years from now. Am I the only one for separation of church, state, and science?
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These techniques have been proven to work
[Read the article: A timeline to Bush government torture]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Thank you Mark for your usual thorough and well written piece.
Most of these new interrogation techniques were developed by the British and used on IRA prisoners decades ago. They have been proven to be much more successful in breaking the will and mind of the prisoner, than hard physical torture like beatings etc... They do result in intelligence, otherwise the SERE program would not exist, and they would discontinue the use of these techniques. The downsides are: breaking a person's mental state so completely that the subject is rendered useless (i.e. Jose Padilla,) the international outcry when evidence of the use of these techniques gets out (i.e. Abu Graib,) and a question of the quality of intelligence.
The measure of what we should do with prisoners of war is a simple one. We should only do what we would want to happen to our own troops. We should not use these techniques unless we are comfortable with the idea of an enemy stripping Jessica Lynch, sexually humiliating her, forcing her to endure stress positions, using dogs on her, time and sensory deprivation/manipulation, psychological torture etc...
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@ Journalists, Citizens and Presidents Live in Different Worlds
[Read the article: A timeline to Bush government torture]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]No. They live in the same and only world we have. They would have you think that we live in different worlds. More importantly, we live in a representational democracy here in the United Stated. The president is supposed to represent our collective will and values. We value humanity. We sign treaties and conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war. If a president, or his counsel, deviate from our collective will, they are out on their own and running a shadow government. That is unconstitutional.
You mention the difficulty of waging a war against a religious enemy, in contrast to waging war against a nationalist or ideological enemy. I'll remind you that our presidents during WWII, Korea, The cold war, and Vietnam made decisions that sacrificed the lives of more Americans than were ever lost on 911 and they didn't compromise their ethics to do so. The allies lost 500,000 men on the beaches of France during the Normandy invasion, and we never capitulated on our adherence to the Geneva conventions. Our path (regarding torture) started to wander during Vietnam. We began to enact torture and accept torture by proxy in that war. A long slow slide into an unethical position.
The ticking time bomb is somewhat a disingenuous scenario. There are very few examples of this to justify a bastardization of our core values. For example, the president was informed of a rising danger of attack by al Qaeda pre 911, no torture needed, and the intelligence was ignored. Other forms of intelligence that pointed to a failed WMD program in Iraq were also ignored, which resulted in a war of aggression that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives. No torture necessary to get and use that intelligence. Key intelligence is available through traditional means.
Lastly, the rule of your actions under a time line and the duress of immediate action should be exactly the same as if it is not. You don't change your values and morals because your current circumstances have changed. That is the true nature of a conservative.
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Non violence doesn't work, but time does.
[Read the article: Dalai Lama's time bomb]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It is an unfortunate myth that the non violent efforts by Gandhi resulted in the capitulation of the British government and the independence of India. In reality, his non violent efforts resulted in his movement staying intact and therefore his movement was on the receiving end of power when the transition happened. Great Britain was divesting it itself from all of it's colonial holdings for a myriad of reasons. The tantamount reason was not that it was morally wrong, as expressed by Gandhi's movement, but that it was economically wrong in a modern world. Almost all colonialist powers released themselves of the burden during that period, with or without local non violent movements and also with or without violent movements.
The example of Palestine as a movement that used violence ineffectually is a misdirect. In that they are on the verge of being granted statehood, I'd suggest that violence worked. It it the assumption of the writer and the reader, that these transitions happen over a shorter period of time. For every example of how non violence hasn't worked to attain autonomy, I could name 10 examples in which it worked just fine. The violence itself is usually not the transitional force, it is the economic realities brought on by violence that usually tips the scales.
We can not fully appreciate the concepts of violence and non violence as a way to a political resolution, if we are not willing to look at both in an objective way.
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The dems won all rounds.
[Read the article: McCain campaign gets greedy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You still don't seem to understand how this works. You are witnessing a change, and don't even get it. For decades the Democrats have been on the receiving end of this kind of tactic. The democrat agenda controlled the news cycle for 3 consecutive days. All articles repeated the premise that John McCain's credentials for leadership should be in question. This is win, win, win. So what if the article's title frames it as an attack. Haven't you ever heard the phrase, any press is good press?
Coordinated or uncoordinated, the Dems are dropping the bombs and controlling the agenda for a change. When the republicans are crying about fairness, you know the Dems are doing something right.