Letters to the Editor
The Voice of Reason
Published Letters: 372 Editor's Choice: 40
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This is bad for U.S. strategy and for the Sunni militants
[Read the article: Three years later, the U.S. gets Zarqawi]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The U.S. and the Sunni militants both, allowed Zarqawi to operate unabated on purpose. For our purposes, he was living proof that Al Qaeda operated in Iraq. For the longest time the administration positioned the war in Iraq as the U.S. vs. the terrorists. As long as Zarqawi was showing up on televisions every now and then this line of bullshit was fine with the American people. The administration wants to sell the idea that Iraq is overrun with terrorists, or that Iraq is being challenged by an outside insurgency, or that Iraq is being challenged by a homegrown insurgency. The truth is, since day two of the invasion, Iraq has been in a civil war.
Zaqawi never held any power in Iraq. The local guys allowed him to operate his small and insignificant units because he served their purpose. It would just be a matter of time before they either gave him up to us, or killed him themselves. They are fighting a civil war for local control of resources, not Zarqawi's fundamentalist ideology. They use fundamentalism the same way our administration uses fundamentalism. To rally the base to a cause.
Now that our/their straw man is dead, they will need to create another.
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You are mistaking the current administration with the U.S.
[Read the article: The incredible shrinking U.S.]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]As you know, we have presidential elections every four years. This puts in check any particular administration's over-reach of power. The pendulum swings both ways. Americans look at their country with a "principle of U.S. exceptionalism," because the United States is exceptional. I am sure that if you sat down with the reasonable women in government in the countries you mention in your article, Afghanistan, Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine...solutions would abound.
Congratulations, your superiority complex supercedes most of us here at Salon. You win.
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interested in so many things
[Read the article: I'm an artist terrified of the vast, blank canvas]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Eliminate the barriers to entry into what you would like to do. Many times an artist would avoid committing to art because of preconceived notions of what it means to be an artist. What an artist is, can be a very long conversation. What an artist does, is not necessarily "paint for a living."
You have decided you would like to teach at a university, before you have actually experienced art as a student. You have determined that an artist is a painter, and a painter would make a living at it. Tall walls indeed.
All the while, you have experienced life with your schizophrenic mother. People who have family members with schizophrenia may be more likely to get the disease themselves. Why make large life altering plans, if in the end, we must all submit to this chaotic world of chance? Why try at life when it can all be undermined by a biological roll of the dice? Thus comes the study of bio-sciences. You try to bring order to an un-orderly world.
Choose life, choose art, choose to paint if that is your strong suite. Paint first, and find a way, a career, and a path as you go. Not before putting brush to canvas.
~Good luck in all that you do.
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Situation Normal
[Read the article: World out of control]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]All Fucked Up.
Most of these trouble spots are more in a period of stasis than coming to a boil. Iran has been needling the United States since they kicked out our buddy the Shaw. Their antithecal position to the "west" is their national identity. Whenever Kim Jong runs out of cash, he rattles the sabers and the United States quietly coughs up some dough to shut him up. You can expect that dance to go on for another 10 years. India has been in dispute with Pakistan and Kashmir since the lines were drawn. Ever notice how bad British map makers are often at the heart of most conflicts? Lebanon has been cowing to the Hezbollah since the end of the civil war, for fear of igniting a new civil war. And of course Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Iran refuse to let the sleeping dog lie and will always be poking Israel in the eye.
Lastly Darfur. The Arabs are mostly nomadic herdsmen and the non-Arabs are mostly sedentary farmers. This leads to a conflict over resources. For centuries the main export of Sudan was its people. The bumper crop was slaves. The Arabs from the north would raid the south and export slaves to the rest of the Arab world. Looking through a longer lens of history, you could comment that things have simmered down there as opposed to heated up.
Read the days news just before bedtime with a warm cup of milk. That way you can drift off to sleep with the comforting notion that everything is right and normal with the world...all fucked up.
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Half citizens
[Read the article: Happy 14th Amendment Day!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]As well as attempting to undermine equality by denying citizenship by birthright, many of our learn-ed legislators are floating the concept of partial citizenship i.e. guestworker programs, and non-citizen I.D.s etc...
One of Gandhi's firsts acts of civil disobedience was to publicly burn South Africa's required registration card (for the country's Indian population.) Half citizens are not a solution either.
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Brunner wants to replace Blackwell as Ohio's secretary of state
[Read the article: The votes don't add up]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...yet she doesn't come down hard on the state's obvious partisan failings and frauds in the last election cycle. Why can't Ohio get a candidate with balls enough to call Blackwell out on his participation in voter fraud?
"What it did was to undermine people's trust in the process," she said. "So when you had a 70 percent turnout as you did in the 2004 presidential election -- and things went wrong as they were bound to with that turnout..."
Shouldn't people in charge of elections expect and prepare for a 100% turnout?
Dear Jennifer Brunner,
Read John Kennedy Jr.'s Rolling Stone/Salon piece on how the elections in Ohio were rigged. Then read it again. Then read it with the notion that perhaps it is not a consipiracy "theory". Then, if you get the position of Secretary of State, create a system that assumes 100% voter turnout. It is your duty and the people of Ohio's right.