Letters to the Editor
AJCalhoun
Published Letters: 964 Editor's Choice: 127
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Word Salad Surgery
[Read the article: How Cheney bombed in Afghanistan]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Fairly often when listening to members of the inner circle of the Bush administration I feel as though I may be having a stroke or that someone slipped acid into my Citrucel. Like, we weren't in Iraq before 9/11 and "the" terrorists hit us anyway. Hah? I reach for the Dramamine as I lurch from my rocking chair to the floor, then, as I struggle to fight off the sensation of motion sickness I remember that Ari Fleischer had put it all into perspective early on when he explained that the proof that Saddam Hussein had, in fact, possessed weapons of mass destruction after none had been found was that none had been found; ergo, someone had moved them. Prior to that mind-buggering logic it had all been straightforward lies and idiocy. Since then we have been digesting ever more blather from this crew. Cheney's insistence on being referred to as a Senior Administrative Official during an interview on the way back from being blown up is one more sign that we have given ourselves over to a gang that not only can't shoot straight, but can't think, talk or see straight either. They are now officially off the hook and yet we, the People, continue to sit back and shake our heads, as though watching our toddlers playimg with matches after having tied us to our chairs.
The Vice President, who has been the architect of every bit of the un-American adventurism which has been carried out by this administration in the name of national "security", has now made it as plain as he can that he feels no human emotion, no civilized impulse and no breeding, but also is not even oriented times one, as I feel certain he doesn't know who the current President is (and probably never did). My concern is not so much that we have something a good deal less sane than a Shriner's convention running a war in our name, but that we have yet to turn out in significant numbers both in writing and in person to make the kind of roar that our Congress, capable of entertaining a non-sequitur such as a "non-binding resolution" will have no choice but to hear it. Given the Hillary Clinton example, if they think we mean it they will act. If they have any doubt they will only guess, and probably incorrectly.
It is a tale told by an idiot, but it is being executed by a human low-pressure zone, the sucking, portentious emptiness that is the soul of Dick Cheney, looking at us through "unseeing insect eyes."
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It's a Paradox. Deal With It
[Read the article: The Iraq insurgency for beginners]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It is surprising, perplexing and profoundly disturbing that so few letter writers here had the ability or willingness to wade through the article and absorb the information. It's accurate, it's useful and with the exception of the apparent paradox presented by Kohlmann, it is illuminating. The fact that few Americans have ever been able to handle a paradoxical situation or even look at something from more than one angle at the same time is how we got into this insane and utterly horrific affair in the first place. To throw up our hands now, when presented with a detailed picture of the real problems we are facing and say "screw 'em, I never liked 'em anyway, let's get the hell out" without some sort of sense of the univsersality of the human condition is pretty goddam pathetic. There is an answer in all this, and it isn't just to reform the Iraqi police force and the interior ministry, although these would have to be part of the solution: it is, beyond that, rather than Kohlmann's silly notion to "put troops on every corner of every street in Iraq", but to put troops on every strategic stretch of Iraq's border, bring in the neighbors (Saudi Arabia in particular, as they already owe us more than they can ever hope to repay), and, yes, let the bloodbath begin, moving in slowly and with great precision to adjust the margins of the slaughter. It is the only thing that can reasonably be done, will not utterly abandon the fire we started (and it was us who threw the match, let's not play that down too much). We could soon begin to draw down troops regardless of the results, as there really is no good answer - there is just an answer. You contain the fire and if you can't extinguish it then you let it burn itself out, but you don't leave so long as there's danger of a rekindle.
Keeping the borders of Iraq secure should be a piece of cake compared with keeping our own borders intact. It's a starting point, and no, we don't get to just write it off as Bush's stupid war. We are all responsible, every one of us, even those of us who screamed "NO!" from the beginning. We do have to pay a price some time, some way. Negotiating the price down as far as possible is our only decent option at this point.
That and maybe place a plaque above the front door of the White House inscribed with the words "Never Again."