Letters to the Editor
FreeOregon
Published Letters: 13
-
some thoughts
[Read the article: Attacking Iran: Are they nuts?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]1. The US can do a lot of damage, but we've shown the world, again, that we cannot win militarily. We haven't won a major engagement since WWII, and even there some would argue that we let the Russians and the British carry the greatest burden. What we did do well was use our industrial might to supply weapons and materiel. Today that reserve manufacturing and engineering capacity has moved to China.
2. We cannot win because we use force inappropriately. We've bought our own myth of being the biggest and strongest. We just haven't been the most intelligent.
3. Actually, no one wins in war. If it comes to Iran rolling our forces into the sea, history teaches them not to repeat Hitler's mistake of letting the British evacuate at Dunkirk.
4. Iran already humiliates the US publicly. It's not even a first rate power. We injure ourselves. Every time we make a threat that we cannot enforce, we set ourselves up for further humiliation. Except at home, where news is filtered, the world sees us as clowns - dangerous clowns, but clowns none the less. Iran will not let the US find a face saving exit from Iraq.
5. Iran has won with superior strategy, not force of arms. To avoid a checkmate, our only course is to withdraw, reassess, and see what non-military tools we have left. With the imminent demise of the dollar as the world's reserve currency, and with it the demise of America's image as the world's business model, these tools now may be ineffective as well.
6. While it is tempting to see this as a Republican debacle, the Democrats supported the use of military force. The debacle is bipartisan. It results from 55 years of arrogance, of relying on and trusting government coercion to solve problems at home and abroad.
I wish there were an easy way out. I see none. No American politician is able to admit that we have lost. Citizens are no longer willing to be self-reliant and mind their own business. The debacle will play out to its end, forcing America's hand.
Karl Huber
-
what?
[Read the article: Attacking Iran: Are they nuts?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The short answer to your two suggested major engagements is NO.
If you want to count bodies, read some military history. You can start with the Romans - losing 100,000 in a day was just stuff that happened - and move to the Russians on the German eastern front. Yes, those 10,000 marines were ours and yes, they fought and won against a foe for whom surrender was not thinkable. That is how we create myths of our superiority. Americans also endured huge sacrifices in the great European battles os WWII. But if you look at comparative sacrifice it seems our greatest moments are when we come in and mop up the mess, after the protagonists have worn themselves out, not as in Korea and Vietnam when we ourselves are the major protagonist.
And no, I do not think that Desert Storm was a major engagement. In a way that is the problem. If you want to know what a major engagement is, start a war with someone who can fight back. Pick on someone your own size. Iraq's population is what - 25 million - and no WMD's. Iran's is 70 odd million, and we don't know yet about their capabilities.
But it's a fairly good bet that they have some of those missing Russian nukes and don't have to produce their own.
Karl Huber
-
communities police their own behavioral norms
[Read the article: Men who hate women on the Web]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]To put any of this in the context of free speech risks inviting in Government to regulate. Kathy Sierra was right to ask for protection. What you see is that Government is incompetent even at the basics.
Communities set their own norms. The boundaries are elastic. The traditional community response to those who cross those boundaries, including those who threaten bodily harm, is to identify the perpetrators and any who facilitate the tresspass, isolate them, shame them, and where possible, stop any and all flows of money and recognition that give them personal satisfaction.
Remember, psychological satisfaction can be negative - having someone tell you how wretched you are. The more a person is stroke starved, the more that person finds any recognition better than none.
Those of you in the community who care about this, it's time to identify, isolate and shame.
This is not about ignoring and suffering in silence. It's about active exclusion. Do more, talk less.
Those who care can do a lot better working together than they can by depending on Government for rules and protection. There's no need for a middleman.
-
still trying to protect the Democrats
[Read the article: "Endgame": A gloomy forecast for the so-called surge]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's time for us, the American people, to wake up. It's time to change a funamentally corrupt system. You can tell who is corrupt by the size of their campaign war chests.
This no longer is about strategies, or whom to blame. We, the people, are to blame.
If we don't want war, then we must change our representatives. We must run in the primaries against the incumbents.
You comment that it is unfair to blame the Democrats. They voted for the war. They have failed to stop it. In truth they are as beholden to the military industrial complex as the Republicans because they take money from the lobbyists. They've all been bought.
The only genuine choice for people against the war is Ron Paul.
We need to listen carefully to him, and run our own lives our own way. We need a government that cannot give us everything we want because that government will take everything we have, including our lives and those of our children.
Take a look at http://www.ronpaul2008.com/ Then think. Discard the divisive language of race and class conflict, and think about the kind of country in which you want to live.
Then act.