Letters to the Editor
mattwa33186
Published Letters: 432 Editor's Choice: 45
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We are going down the tubes, fast
[Read the article: The complete myth driving our Iraq "debate"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This entire argument, a straw man set up by people who can't understand why their party isn't doing what they want, demonstrates a big reason we have gone from being leaders to laughingstocks in a few short years.
The time to rant and rave was before the war, but before the war none of this was supposed to affect us very much. March into a primitive country, destroy their evil (stable, but evil) government, inject democracy, and come home. Hard to get too worked up about fucking up the lives of people 10,000 miles away, right? Most of us had no skin in the game, so most of us just went with the flow, commentators and ordinary citizens alike. Protest was weak, and based on all the wrong reasons.
The reason we can't cut funding and leave is the same reason the war was a mistake in the first place. Sadam was left in power after Gulf War I for a reason, a reason Powell and ironically Cheney were very aware of - you don't fight religious fanaticism with tolerant democracy, you fight it with fascism. This has ever been the case. That's why Iraq needed a military dictator and still does. Iraq, like Israel, is a country that can not exist without the presence of overwhelming military force led by an overpoweringly strong will. Surrounded by fanatical enemies, the most secular nation in the region maintained its borders through force of arms and strength of will for 40 years. And we removed the arms and the will in one fell swoop.
Even if Rumsfeld hadn't made the greatest blunder in modern military history (days before the war started), we were never going to be able to leave Iraq without having the map redrawn within 5 years unless we were prepared to also take out Iran, and possibly every other Muslim country in the world.
Of course Sadam was evil. Of course he deserved to die. But he was also a critical component of what passes for peace in that region. We removed him and now we have to assume his role, possibly forever, or witness the birth of an Iranian led superpower driven by love for Allah and hatred of America. That's why Bush wants to double his bets by attacking Iran, which is sure to lead to horrible consequences for us and for them.
Political commentators have been trying to find a way to obfuscate the fact that they blew it 5 years ago since Cindy Sheehan, and now they think they have it. Citizens are desperate to find a reason for us to abdicate the responsibility we undertook when we crushed a government that had gone out of its way not to give us an excuse to do so.
We have become a nation of spineless jellyfish unwilling to accept the consequences of our actions. The Democrats have become the leaders we deserve.
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To anonymous
[Read the article: Is Rush Limbaugh right?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In response to anonymous, my point was that racism and ignorance are rampant on both sides of this argument and that this is a big reason why we are not able to see the real politics behind it. "Hispanic" is not a culture. In many cases it isn't even considered a race by those who are categorized as Hispanic. The reason why the Hispanic population is grossly underestimated in South Florida is that Cubans and South Americans usually choose Caucasian or both Caucasian and Hispanic when asked. Computers only take your first answer, so most get listed as Caucasian.
The Cuban immigration situation is a result of Cold War politics. Again, most don't know about it because the government keeps it quiet since Carter's Mariel disaster.
As for allowing any who want to come to live here, of course we can't. We stopped being a country that could support that with the advent of the Great Society. Get rid of all the social programs and require responsible employment policies of corporations and we probably could support all those people, hell we'd probably need them.
And finally, the reason the Republicans like this argument, the thing you may never hear Rush say, is that illegal immigration isn't the real problem. Blue and brown collar workers sneaking across the border aren't costing Americans jobs - there will always be plenty of those jobs to go around. The real problem, the one that Bush refuses to address and has in fact made infinitely worse, is legal white collar immigration from Central and East Asia and Eastern Europe. Every H1-B visa is a foreigner taking a $70,000 a year job from an American for $45,000. That's how this government serves corporate interests with it's immigration policies. The difference between paying someone $4 an hour to sweep the floors and paying them $7 is negligible - those jobs don't come with benefits, matching retirement contributions, vacation time, etc... They are nearly unburdened positions. But white collar jobs save corporations billions a year. But by keeping the argument focused on the Central American problem, by showing thousands of Mexicans protesting in the streets, threatening to build fences, the Republicans have successfully moved the debate to something that doesn't really matter except in the minds of the sheep they are leading to the slaughter.