Letters to the Editor
rkr327
Published Letters: 43 Editor's Choice: 5
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Rove, Cheney, 9/11 and Iraq
[Read the article: Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Saddam Hussein and 9/11]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Conider this from last Wednesday's (August 15th) Daily Show:
Stewart’s guest was Stephen F. Hayes who has written a ‘love letter’ book on Cheney. (He’s so smart, so capable. We need more Dick Cheneys.). In preparation for the visit, Stewart ran some video clips of Cheney after Gulf War I going into all the problems which would be accompany the replacement of Saddam Hussein’s regime. The clips showed him to be fully aware of the whole litany of things that flowered into this tragic reality. Stewart then asked “What Changed?” How could [the Oh so smart!] Cheney have recommended we go into Iraq in 2003 unprepared to deal with all the problems he was so well aware of a decade earlier? [GREAT QUESTION!] At this point the interview stumbled a bit off course, and never got quite back to Stewart’s original ‘right on’ query. Things quickly slipped into the administration’s hoary standard: 'What changed? 9/11!' But that addressed the strategic question. It is plausible to argue that the problems accompanying regime change after Gulf War I made it inadvisable to remove Saddam then, but after 9/11 removal became necessary in spite of those problems. But ‘What changed? 9/11!’ does not address the tactical question: What changed about those problems that we could fail to prepare to deal with them in 2003? Stewart tried to get back to that really devastating point, but did not quite make it. He got lost, instead, in the related, but still important, matter of ‘How could they so casually blow off those (all too real) problems in their public pronouncements?' [Yes, they might have argued, some duplicity was needed to persuade us to 'go along' with a 'necessary' war, but that by no means excuses them from being prepared to deal with problems they were clearly (even acutely) aware of a decade earlier.] Nevertheless, Stewart drew blood no one else has drawn.
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The importance of the 'Sargeants' Op-Ed
[Read the article: "We have failed on every promise"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Joan,
I'm s-o-o glad you chose to feature this. It should get as big a play as the O'Hanlon/Pollack peice a about a week earlier. Keep flooging it.
Consider this quote:
Reports that a majority of Iraqi Army commanders are now reliable partners can be considered only misleading rhetoric. The truth is that battalion commanders, even if well meaning, have little to no influence over the thousands of obstinate men under them, in an incoherent chain of command, who are really loyal only to their militias.
From early 2005 (in the wake of January elections that occaisioned so much upbeat effusion from the administration, its acolyets and even the MSM) I have held that it did not matter how many Iraqis we trained up, or how trained up they were, but who those trainees would be loyal to, who they would be willing to fight an die for.
. . . . creating proxies is essential in winning a counterinsurgency, it requires that the proxies are loyal to the center that we claim to support.
I don't consider I was being prescient two and a half years ago, simply applying common sense. Common sense so strikingly apparent in this Op-Ed by our seven Sargeants.
That these Non-Coms are capable of producing such should be a source of immense pride and a ringing affirmation that 'average' Americans can be responsible – and probingly thoughtful - citizens as well as, and even before, they are soldiers. Citizen soldiers it the finest and most constructive sense.
Score one for Democracy!
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Re: I love my country, but fear my government
[Read the article: The conservative vision of America, by National Review]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This recalls a Bush oldie but goldie from the 2000 campaign: "{We trust the people not the government." I desperately wanted some one to ask:"Oh, you mean the democratically elected governmant of those same people you say you trust?"
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Rebranding
[Read the article: "We're all fascists now"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This book is about ONE THING and ONE THING only: REBRANDING.
Communists! Marxists! Those epithets were the one thrown at the Left by the Right. Fascists! Nazis! were thrown back by the Left at the Right.
There things stood: Equally toxic either way.
But now the Communist/Marxist labels have lost something of their 'zing'. Not so the Fascist/Nazi ones. So now Jonah Goldberg has taken the point in a Right wing 'bright idea' to apply the (now) more toxic set of labels to the Left.
An entirely useful, historically valid and defenseable conceptualism has been thrown out the window. The really important point about that conceptualism hss been, starting either from the Left or the Right, one can arrive at totalitarianism. A fact Mr. Goldberg's 'cute' little ploy (scheme?)will obscure.
REBRANDING: NOTHING MORE, NOTHING LESS