Letters to the Editor
lapsang souchong
Published Letters: 81 Editor's Choice: 1
-
They were a PLANT
[Read the article: Wait a minute: Iron whose shirt?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Am I the only one who remembers that the "Iron My Shirt" "hecklers" had "Hillary for President" stickers on their bags? I don't think the question of whether or not they were plants has been satisfactorily resolved. Who does this incident benefit other than Clinton? As many of the commenters here point out, their heckling rallied women to HRC's side because of the appearance of sexism--just as blacks would rally (even more?) to Obama's side if someone came to his events with a sign saying "Shine My Shoes." While it is possible that these people were Hillary Haters--albeit really dumb ones--it seems to me that things here are a little fishy. Oh well, it worked anyway...HRC has almost succeeded in her goal to get women (older, uneducated white women, anyway) to vote with their vaginas.
-
this article
[Read the article: Rev. Jeremiah Wright isn't the problem]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]is part of what's right with America.
-
Ve vere just followink orders
[Read the article: Once upon a time, Dad went to war]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]A commenter above made the very apt analogy to Nuremberg. If we didn't take "We were following orders" as an answer there, why should we take it here?
Right, I forgot, it's OK when we do it.
Oh, and as for the person who suggested that by paying taxes I am in some way equally accountable as the people doing the killing? I withhold every April for the war. http://www.nwtrcc.org/
-
I'm sure
[Read the article: Once upon a time, Dad went to war]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]that the economic hardships faced by soldiers make the mommies and daddies in Iraq who had to bury their children feel MUCH better about US soldiers. Maybe if we could just make them understand that these people had no other financial recourse they wouldn't hate us so much. You should work on a public-awareness campaign in Iraq to let the families of murdered civilians know just how hard it is to work an American fast-food job.
-
@haggismold
[Read the article: Once upon a time, Dad went to war]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This is a well-crafted and thoughtful response that shows much more care and consideration for the feelings of Salon readers than mine do, obviously. Unfortunately, now is not the time for care and consideration--for our studied indifference to the crimes committed in our names to be mollycoddled and encouraged. While your point that I am not blameless is well taken and doubtless true, it is also to a certain extent disingenuous and not entirely relevant. Nothing I have ever done even COMPARES to the atrocities US forces have visited on Iraqi children. I posted this link before and it got deleted--I will remove my commentary this time in the hopes that is allowed to remain:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/rape-american-soldiers-took-turns/2006/08/08/1154802889413.html
Read that and ask yourself if you would still be accusing me of "late-adolescent moral outrage" had the victim's name been, say, Bethany Schoenfeld rather than Abeer Qasim Hamsa.
I also reject your assertion that by comparing Iraqi dead to American dead I am setting myself up as an "arbiter of universal moral outrage." Obviously any ethical judgment is purely subjective, and to say that I am attempting to appeal to an imaginary universal source of ethics is a gross misunderstanding of what I am trying to do, which is to get people to realize that war is a slippery thing and that by volunteering to go make it happen you are dragging yourself down to the level of those you fight. It is pretty amusing to me that you refer to my "outrage" and "condemnation" as if these were inappropriate reactions to what is happening on a daily basis in Iraq. It is very easy to attack me for my impolite and inconsiderate attacks on "the troops." I am uninvolved and, as you pointed out, do not have my hands dirty. However, would you be able to say what you just wrote with a straight face to an Iraqi who had lost his child and was making the same arguments I am? I doubt it.
As for my "inability to relate to the working poor in this country," I can only lament the fact that it runs to the extent that I am unwilling to excuse rape and murder because "it pays better than McDonalds." Heroin dealers, hitmen who kill "clients" for cash, child sex slave traffickers--all these people make the same argument. "I needed to feed my family." "Would you have rather my kids gone hungry?" Etc. This is what is known in the world of philosophy as a "false dilemma." Small Americans are worth my concern--this is why I do not engage in the patronizing and condescending charade that "they didn't know any better, they just needed the money."
My understanding of the basic mechanisms of human organization is doubtlessly not as developed as yours, but I understand enough to know that what you have put forth in this section of your response is basically a slightly more sophisticated version of the "we were just following orders" argument. As I said elsewhere in this thread: we didn't take that for an excuse at Nuremberg and we shouldn't do it now.
I appreciate your concern and your measured, even-handed, and thoughtful remarks, but I stick to my position. Getting people to realize or acknowledge or at least CONSIDER for a moment the truth--the nasty, sordid, horrible, disgusting details of what is being done in our name--is more important than getting them to like you or sympathize with your views.
As a final comment, I suggest that you consider for a moment the irony of saying that I am the one here who lacks empathy. The fact is, there are 160,000 American soldiers out there, the vast majority of whom have probably been damaged in some sense or another by this war. To put that in "empathy perspective," that is less than one-third of the number of Iraqi civilians KILLED in this war. The person who lacks empathy regarding this conflict is the one who does not feel a certain twinge of oddness watching as we gasp and shudder at the horror of 4,000 American deaths without even bothering to attempt to count the number of Iraqis mowed down by our armed forces like so much grass.