Letters to the Editor
MereMortal
Published Letters: 151 Editor's Choice: 19
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It's the rampant Militarism stupid
[Read the article: Is a new conservatism possible?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm reminded of that great definition about logical levels and making errors with them. You will not find the solution to a traffic jam by opening up the bonnet of your car and fiddling with the spark-plugs. They're at different logical levels.
A far more learned man than me - Chalmers Johnson - has a way of putting the problem in a nutshell.
He says that right after WWII Great Britain faced a crucial fork in the road, either they kept their empire and lost their democracy at home or the other way round. He says they chose their democracy and largely [with some key aberrations - Malaya,Kenya, Suez and recently Iraq] they gave up their empire.
The reason being, that militarism sucks the life-blood from every necessary branch, needed for checks and balances, of democracy. it does this, in terms of energy, funds and priorities. It also requires cabals and secrecy, which are never good for solid and constructive policy making.
He says there is no way to have both. If you keep empire you will eventually live in a police state. 9/11 and the rabid conservatism that has grown since the late 60s are all related to this dichotomy. Militarism and empire, that's your problem at heart, the conservatives have masked this truth with an endless pandering - in words, not deeds - to their fanatic base. This helps them to get the votes, but they then stiff their base. Their real aim is keeping the military-industrial-congressional complex going.
I don't believe for a milli-second that Bush, Cheney, Rice, Guliani, McCain [the whole list is long] have anything but profound contempt in private for the fanatical masses that they pretend to laud in public. As for traditional, rational fiscal conservatives...at least you can have a solid and genuine argument with them.
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The dishonest politics of petulance
[Read the article: Iraq taught us nothing]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Maybe they do things for reasons that they don't state and that Kamiya hasn't analyzed.
Maybe they just want to cripple Iran and they don't care about the transparency of their flawed case and don't care about what Iran will do to retaliate. Maybe they have planned to disable Iran from retaliating say in the straits of Hormuz, but are quite happy for the wave of 'terrorism' that comes and legitimises the modern American 'paranoid security state complex' when Iran inevitably hits back in some asymmetrical way.
Maybe this lot are not thinking 'swift and logically neat' attack on Iran. Maybe they're thinking 'attack on Iran' and 'doesn't really matter what happens after' someone else will have to and indeed will deal with that.
Maybe they're just seizing their chance to beat up on an enemy they've always wanted to beat up on, before it's too late i.e not before it's too late because Iran will have nukes, but because they will be out of office having missed their chance before 09.
Maybe in the shadow of the capitalism crisis and the dollar crisis that the US is undergoing, rampaging violently around the planet looking for your next victim IS the new economy.
By projecting power in this way after having exhausted trying to earn an honest living, the US can lord it over the other countries with an overwhelming balance of terror, when various crises oil/dollar/resource scarcity/climate change all converge. Maybe they've seen the stats and they're far far worse than the lying MSM tells us.
It could be a staggering case of petulant foreign policy for the sake of it, no more no less or maybe it's to do with money, maybe this is the answer the moneyed elites have dreamt up to rebalance world power in the wake of all the emerging and populous competitors in the East.
Maybe Bush and Cheney are the all-time nightmare ticket of all the electees to US office because of deep reasons of state that are not declared or discussed rather than simply because they are the awful people they coincidentally just happen to be ;-)
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in your bones you know it
[Read the article: Rudy's new best friend]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's wired into human nature to expect that malfeasance will be punished by some some divine wind. Karma is a more sophisticated refinement of essentially the idea that there are effects to one's actions good/bad that cannot be escaped.
We believe these things because we can't really help it, but surely in our bones we know that the MSM will not taunt Guiliani about the latest and most disturbing company he keeps. He's shaping up nicely for the GOP as their most credible leader and Hillary beater. The MSM isn't remotely interested in the job of 'monitoring the centers of power' so sit back watch with predictability as your deeply crooked media sinks to a new low by being diverted from doing its proper job by its corporate masters.
The other thing we know in our bones is that whilst we yearn deeply for a candidate who will say "I'm different, I will fix this broken system" who then goes on to succeed, the system [consisting of its entrenched and powerful interests] is designed to survive the candidate and not the other way round -- but we never learn do we ;-)
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and for the record...
[Read the article: WSJ Op-Ed page decries hatred of the president]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This is a time of great great peril for the world. Bush and Cheney and co are edging all of us closer and closer to armageddon. And what does this neocon buffoon fret about? Bush-hatred clouding intellectual judgment. Talk about inappropriate irrelevance, anyone would think he was talking about his pet cat's dislike of a new brand of pet food, instead of quite possibly the single most trigger-happy, world-peace destabilizing 'nuccular-tipped' rogue regime on the planet.