Letters to the Editor
Nita Martin
Published Letters: 271 Editor's Choice: 62
-
Is this the best we can do?
[Read the article: No graceful exit]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's a sad day when a hand-picked group of strategists spends eight months considering the options in Iraq and comes up with nothing more than what we've known all along. An incredibly superficial list of possible recommendations without the benefit of real plans. Sounds vaguely familiar.
Pull the troops out and come home: If we do this, we will have destroyed a country and we will never recover our reputation in the world community. "Let the chips fall where they may" is not living up to the responsibilities we so carelessly created for ourselves. Not to mention the fact that we will have single-handedly established the largest terrorist base in the world.
Reduce troop levels: We're losing lives of our military now. It doesn't take a think tank to imagine what will happen if we leave fewer of them behind in this escalating chaos. For all the people who have children there, including me, this would appear to be just plain madness.
Send more troops in: Where are we going to get them? Bush has ground our military down to an exhausted and disheartened shell. If the media were really covering this, EVERYONE would know that we have abandoned the equipment in Iraq, leaving troops unequipped for new deployments. We have used up deployment levels so that even now, the only way we are maintaining troop levels is by desperately extending the tours of those who have already served beyond reason. We have dropped recruiting standards to meet goals which will leave us with not the "few, the proud", but rather a force of the barely acceptable.
Enable the Iraqis: We know they are not doing the job now. There are units of our military who were deployed to train them, and who are instead spending their time sweeping for insurgents, doing the jobs of those they are supposedly training. Sectarian agendas are rife in the Iraqi military and police. And last, but not least, the Iraqi's are not Americans...with an affinity for swagger and guns. They are culturally different, and it is affecting their ability to "stand up, so that we can stand down".
Rather than the Iraq Study Group (It was "think tanks" that spawned the ideology that got us into this), I would have preferred to see a group of not "fixers" and politicians, but a group of the best and brightest in the military, foreign affairs, business. All the minds that understand the value of real action items to build a plan. We should have had that before this was ever begun, if it was to have begun at all. It may be too late, but in the face of this monumental failure, why are we still posturing with people who are only capable or willing to address the superficial, and unwilling to spend the effort to create a specific "action item" agenda and commit to a critical path to make it happen. This needs to be attacked from a project management point of view, not a political one. This is what comes of an administration that places inage, loyalty and "payback" above competence.
-
Well put, Arvin Hill!
[Read the article: The madness of George]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Unfortunately for us, diplomacy may be a mythical option for us now that the Bush Cabal has insisted on rattling its sword in the direction of Syria and Iran. Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld have all been guilty of threatening these countries. It's hard to make someone sit down with a bully. ("Some people may call it swaggering, but in Texas, we call it walking.") And for those who are now trying to keep Rice away from the tainted boys and paint her as a diplomat, I have a vivid recollection of her repeatedly saying on the TV news talk circuit that military action against Iran wasn't "off the table."
There is something incredibly tragic about our lack of intelligent leadership and statesmanship across the board, that we are now arrogantly seeing a possible solution to our problems in a friendly sit-down with two countries we have done our best to engage in hostilities.
As Bush was shown this week, he can't bring people to the table after he's tried to cut them off at the knees.
-
Super(ficial) Hero Syndrome Part 2
[Read the article: Two parts hubris, one part paranoia]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What is it about Americans that makes them such sitting ducks for a man who shows up in a crisis and takes center stage? Like Bush, Giuliani's perceived strength is simply a veneer of Twin Towers dust. Yet so many seem poised to embrace him as a stalwart leader of men. Didn't they learn anything from the last six years. A photo op (or many months of them) with bereaved firemen does not a leader make.
The most disturbing thing to me about Rudy Giuliani is how he, like Bush, has spent his own "political capital" in the subsequent years. His angling to have Bernard Kerik propped up as head of Homeland Security speaks volumes about his judgement, and his motives. Giuliani has become a war profiteer in the greediest sense. Imagine the big bucks that would come with having your partner as the man with the giant unfettered government checkbook. Kind of like Cheney and Halliburton. Giuliani is indeed a narcissist, but an obviously rabidly opportunistic one. God help us if voters fall back into the same acceptance of superficiality and "image" that landed us where we are today.