Letters to the Editor
AJCalhoun
Published Letters: 992 Editor's Choice: 129
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The Nightmare Was Nixon's
[Read the article: The man who ended our Nixon nightmare]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Although he was a Republican (something probably incomprehensible to a majority of the contributors here), Richard Nixon was a very moderate-to-liberal Republican who accomplished a lot despite the mental and moral handicaps he endured during his lifetime. The one really generous thing he did was to appoint Gerry Ford Vice President, even if it was to insure his escape
from a post-Watergate pounding. What Nixon did to sink himself was the product of a paranoiac who didn't even trust himself, let alone the people around him. He was barely competent to stand trial, and for what? Compared with the crimes of George W. Bush, Dick Nixon looks like a Sunday school teacher!
But Nixon's been gone a long time. Gerry Ford, a truly decent and honest man, was the right person, regardless of whether or not it was for a right reason. He was the perfect bookmark for a period in our history when no one could win. When Jimmy Carter blithely walked into the propeller behind Ford it was more of the same, and I felt as bad for him as I had for Ford. The only difference is that Carter has been a lot more active and involved in things since his Presidency was so rudely interrupted.
We could go back to Lyndon Johnson, one of the bigger blots on our nation's history, but that would only take us further up the smoky corridors of power to Harry Truman's power broking. There's enough hubris and stupidity to go around from FDR's passing til the arrival of Bill Clinton, but pardoning Nixon was, in my view, a really humane way to spare the nation being any further sundered than it already had been by so many things apart from Viet Nam.
Now is the time, if ever there has been one, to turn into a "banana republic" and advance upon the White House with a rope and torches. Gerry Ford pardoned a pathetic, delusional man who had only managed to get us all pissed off at each other. It felt good to get past that. It would be equally good for us to now go through the national dialysis of removing every trace of the Bush legacy. The only way we can hope that happens is to field one great Democratic candidate who won't pardon the biggest miscreant of them all.
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Even This Man's Death Diminishes Me
[Read the article: Saddam: The death of a dictator]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It is finished. No one here in the US will much care one way or the other. They never did before our lunatic President pointed, at the height of the search in Afghanistan for Osama Bin Laden, toward Iraq and yelled "Look! Over there!" and we all looked, idiots that we are.
US influence put Saddam where he was, allowed him to grow into the monster he was, then chose to kill him (and let there be no mistake about this: we did kill him) when he was no longer useful to us. Meanwhile a mass-murderer goes "marginalized" for five years.
So Saddam is dead. I probably won't lose any sleep over that fact, but my dreams may be a little troubled because of how this was accomplished. Still, the Big Question that will fail to penetrate the thick Collective American Skull is this: Is the world now any better a place than it was before Saddam Hussein's neck snapped? Will this somehow correct the maiming of one of the planet's oldest and most historically significant countries? Will it matter that Saddam will now lie alongside almost 3000 American troops and upwards of 10,000 Iraqi citizens and Iraq itself will only be plunged into ever deepening turmoil, chaos and violence?
What, exactly, has been accomplished by this "milestone" in a war that has become a millstone, an albatross, around the neck of this nation, just as ominous as that noose likely felt around Saddam Hussein's neck?
The world is less one vicious dictator, but so many more remain, so many of our making, and the nation this man dictated to will now descend into a kind of horror only a fiend could see as progress heralded by this "milestone."
It's strange, but I do care about the death of this ridiculous and horrible man, because it wasn't ours to mete out, nor was it ours to farm out. It is a fitting end to not only the reign of Saddam Hussein but also to that of George W. Bush and those who continue to enable it. What we have done is now utterly incalculable. Hell awaits. Never mind it isn't waiting on our shores.
Don't bother to ask for whom that bell tolls. You really don't want to know.
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As a Self-respecting Conservative Republican I Have to Say
[Read the article: How the left caused 9/11, by Dinesh D'Souza]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]D'Souza - still fulla shit after all these years. Not only full of it, but flopping around in it. This is perhaps the most pathetic interview I have read in the past two or three years. Unable to make a case for anything in writing, let D'Souza speak and it all just starts to sound like Jay Leno interviewing some high school kid during a "Jaywalking" segment.
I could have been doing something constructive instead of reading this drivel. My bad. Still hopeful after all these years.