Letters to the Editor
notre druide
Published Letters: 115 Editor's Choice: 5
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No Pockets Deep Enough
[Read the article: Conspiracy theory in the frozen North]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I wouldn't take too much comfort in the notion that Exxon will be held liable for its share of climate change. The people who profited from Exxon's bad behavior will have long since taken their winnings and left the casino. Exxon as a corporation may well be obliterated, but there's no way it will have the assets to pay even a microscopic portion of the harm it will have caused -- and that assumes it won't succeed, as many other corporate wrongdoers have, in passing off its assets to other entities before the sheriff comes to collect on the judgment.
It would be nice if corporations were really "persons" who could be punished, but in fact they are fictions whose sole purpose is to insulate investors from liability so that they can freely gamble on an enterprise's profitability without risking more than they are willing to invest. Smart investors will start bailing from Exxon, et al., long before the ordure hits the rotors on liability.
When the smoke clears, if there's anything left of the legal order, perhaps we can reexamine the question whether it is desirable to insulate investors this completely from the consequences of their antisocial undertakings.
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DemoNcracy
[Read the article: Fred Hiatt's foreign policy "principles"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I was going to mention the Vanity Fair piece and what it says about the neocons' professed vocation for bringing democracy to the world. This can only be credited if they mean "democracy" in some peculiar economic sense, i.e., those with dollars can spend them on whatever they want. This after all does seem to be what many Americans think of as the "freedom" our kids are dying and killing for in Iraq.
Through its contemptuous treatment of real democracy around the world, the U. S. has sown the wind and reaped the whirlwind again and again, but nothing seems to change. One can draw a pretty straight line from the overthrow of Mossadeq in 1953 to the Iranian Revolution (and American hostage crisis) of 1979, to the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, the first Iraq War of 1991, the sanctions of the 1990s, and the current Iraq war. Not to suggest that the last was thrust upon the U.S. by the currents of history -- quite the reverse. The United States has not fought a less necessary war since the days of "Remember the Maine." The point is that when Kermit Roosevelt overthrew the democratically elected government of Iraq 55 years ago, nobody had any idea of the bloody chaos that would echo down the corridors of time.
Or maybe some did. Not everybody suffers from this approach to "democracy." Oil and arms companies make out right well. The right to buy stock in them is about as much democracy as most humans appear likely to get in the foreseeable future.
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Correction
[Read the article: Fred Hiatt's foreign policy "principles"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I meant of course to say,
when Kermit Roosevelt overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran 55 years ago
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One Hunky Hombre
[Read the article: War cheerleaders ask: "Is Obama man enough to be president?"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I know we've plowed this ground already, but every time one of these macho-talking wimps sounds off I need to do a reality check by running him through google images. And yeah, here's that awesome tower of manly power, Glenn Reynolds (link at my sig).
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@ h_lance
[Read the article: How the U.S. can still save Iraq]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Well, this discussion board certainly shows up the problem
Agreed.
As a number of posts have noted, the idea that the "solution" to Iraq's problems is for the US to set up a brutal, authoritarian dictatorship is utterly insane.
Indeed, this very paragraph "shows up the problem," though several others in the discussion so far would serve as well. Rather than contemplate a solution that offends our image of ourselves, we will reject it out of hand and spout a lot of hyperbole and vitriol (betraying no small amount of magical thinking along the way).
As the man says, Americans won't listen. What he perhaps doesn't see is that they can't listen because they still manage to labor under a host of delusions about who they are, what their role in the world is, and how real human affairs really work.
The ultimate question here ought to be, what solution is least bad for the Iraqis? We at least owe it to them to think long and hard about that question, not retreat from it because the answer might not be consistent with our self-image.
I'm prepared to walk away, too, if that's the best solution for the people whose country we have destroyed. But unlike a lot of folks here I'm prepared to listen carefully and take quite seriously the ideas of an Iraqi who says that isn't the best solution for his people. And I'm not prepared to reject a solution just because it offends the virtuous self-image I wish to possess.
Sometimes you don't have the choice of doing the right thing. You only have the choice of doing the least wrong thing, or doing nothing. And unless doing nothing is the least wrong thing, it ain't virtue. It's just self-delusion.
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Another Treasured American Crank
[Read the article: Still has a mouth, and still must scream]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I have mixed feelings about Ellison, which is what he wants me to have. But it's a pretty good bet that if I outlive him, I'll lament his passing with a frequency and intensity that are hard to imagine now.
How do I know this? Because that's exactly what happened with Frank Zappa, a very similar character in a different medium.
It's people like Ellison and Zappa that make us realize what vanilla, namby-pamby things our consensus reality, and our commentary on it, really are. There are far too few of them; we desperately need them; and we must treasure the ones we've got.