Letters to the Editor
Rocky57
Published Letters: 213 Editor's Choice: 4
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Joan:...
[Read the article: Hillary Clinton's long strange journey on Iraq]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"...It was hard not to think, by contrast, about Clinton's failure to marshal all of her rhetorical resources -- a year ago, a month ago, today? -- to fight the single most persuasive argument against her candidacy: that when she had the chance, she didn't face down George W. Bush and oppose his rush to war in 2003...."
If Hillary had done a thing so right that a brain surgeon or a saint wasn't needed to do it, regarding the war resolution, or had even worded her proviso just a bit more strongly, with no weasel words like "...a unilateral attack, while it cannot be ruled out..." she wouldn't even be able to see Obama in her rear view mirror on the road to the candidacy, rather than find herself in the present position of having to eat his dust.
And, as for "humble" Hillary admitting her mistake? Please, she's a Rodham and Hugh would have understood that. Sometimes the destination for your journey's set before you even think of taking it.
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Tyler_Mason
[Read the article: Hillary Clinton's long strange journey on Iraq]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"...The US still occupies Germany, Japan, and South Korea. Those nations have been at peace for many many decades. They are our allies. Why shouldn't we hope the same for Iraq?"
Because, once more, we beat them--fair and square--in a war with a formal beginning and a formal end and with two advanced homogeneous populations, not a hodge-podge conglomeration foisted on groups of people by outsiders [the same one's who'd recently invaded, with no valid reason] with an exploitatively economic stake in creating artificial boundaries. And, when we beat the former, we didn't have to contend with a religiously oriented radical movement and two hostile [towards each other] subsets of the same religion.
Ditto for S. Korea in the sense that it was also homogeneous, and instead of being invaded, by us, were protected from invasion by UN and American forces.
Get it? One is an apple; the other's an orange.
Laaawd hav' muhcy!
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Str8ht
[Read the article: Hillary Clinton's long strange journey on Iraq]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"...Any way I look at these pathetic excuses for that vote I see someone who doesn't deserve *my* vote, apology or not. She had a chance to do the right thing and take a leadership role, but instead thought first of how it would affect her presidential chances in 2008."
Right, Straight...and that move was no different from that of an opportunistic man. I just wish a certain demographic of the female voting population that is primed to vote for "a woman candidate" understands that.
On the most important vote of the last 35 to 40 years--and, perhaps one of the most important votes, ever, of this Republic--Clinton either didn't know enough of what any net diver with access to google, the CIA factbook and any number of publications knew about the validity of this war or she ignored the potential plight of tens of thousands of women, children and their husbands and fathers, already suffering from onerous sanctions and sitting in the path of a mechanised sh_t storm and its aftermath, and voted because it would make her appear to be of presidential timbre.
Why vote for a woman when she's going to give you the S.O.S* her compromised three-legged Congressional compatriots give you? And, who has given you that same thing, throughout her career?
*(ref Bertrand Tavenier's "Round Midnight" and its central character, Dale Turner, if you care for the translation)
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Masculine/Feminine
[Read the article: Hillary Clinton's long strange journey on Iraq]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"...I understand how frustrated HIllary supporters are when they see black voters choosing to vote for Obama. But, imagine how much credit black voters would have given her if she had even just tried to explain that she understands the legacy of racism..."
Hell, all she had to do was restrain her Campaign, Bill, Bob Johnson, Rangel, Shaheen and Mark Penn from going down "paint 'em as jes' another black wannabe" road and she'd still have 30pct of the black vote....what would have been Obama's chances vis a vis hers for the nomination, then?
But, she's her father's daughter and no matter how she may have hobnobbed with "The Other," at Wellesley and beyond, one apparently can't get completely clear of what one has learned at one's daddy's knee...or at his dinner table.
She initially patronised Obama as an articulate pet and when the pet stood up on its hindlegs and looked her in the eye she panicked and reverted to what was almost a part of her familial DNA. Now, we've got a situation where a Dem cakewalk, in November could very well result in a McCain Presidency.
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Prytania
[Read the article: The last rendezvous with Arthur C. Clarke]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Sorry, on both counts...it's been 43 years since I last read it. Flying strictly on [an apparently faulty] memory.
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Points of Interest
[Read the article: Guerrillas rise up in Nazi-occupied Britain]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This has been some week for Salon letter-writing SF aficionados, with the death of Arthur C. Clarke [and the subsequent great essay/eulogy from Andrew Leonard] and, now, this sub-genre alt-history novel [even though its premise, as some writers have taken care to point out, is similar, partly, to an event which actually took place].
Points of interest: I'd always thought the first notable literary work to devote itself to an alternate history of the American Civil War was "Bring the Jubilee" by the great SF master, Ward Moore, in the very early fifties. I'm surprised that Churchill may have beaten him to it. The black filmmaker, Kevin Willmot, was inspired, I believe, by Moore's work when he made 2005's "C.S.A."
Likewise, I'd been under the impression that the somewhat [undeservedly] obscure British SF/fantasy writer, Sarban, with his "Sound of his Horn," was one of the first writers to tackle an alternate outcome to World War II followed by the American Masters, C.M. Kornbluth's "Two Dooms" and, of course, as Laura Miller has mentioned, Phil Dick's "Castle."
Lastly, would anyone know if it's possible to obtain the long out of print "Jubilee"?