Letters to the Editor
Asher Steinberg
Published Letters: 231 Editor's Choice: 12
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"The Most Disastrous And Unpopular War In American History"?
[Read the article: War advocates like Anne-Marie Slaughter demand that you forget the past]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm sure you have some poll numbers for the unpopular part, though Vietnam certainly generated far more protest, but I don't see how you could say that this war has been more disastrous than Vietnam. Over 14 times as many American lives were lost, we were there for 16 years, we ultimately lost the war... here at least we succeeded in deposing the regime we went there to depose. What possible basis could you have for calling Iraq a bigger disaster? Compared to Vietnam Iraq is like a blip. A bungled blip, but a blip nevertheless.
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..
[Read the article: War advocates like Anne-Marie Slaughter demand that you forget the past]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The likely consequences, I should think.
Given that many scholars would argue that our bombing and general destabilization of Cambodia, during the Vietnam War, led to the success of the Khmer Rouge, that seems pretty dubious.
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Sorry, This Post Is Pointless
[Read the article: One of Instapundit's favorite blogs speaks on race]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Let's talk more and more about all the racism and radicalism among isolated black people
It's not isolated. Most black people I know don't see anything that wrong with Wright's comments, and polls show that over 40% of blacks believe that the government gave us AIDS.
and ignore the endless bile that has long spewed forth from the far more powerful appendages of the right-wing noise-machine, exemplified by Instapunk's Easter meditation on race.
Right, let's ignore what Obama's spiritual adviser believes, because that couldn't possibly have any bearing on his own beliefs, while focusing our attention on what some meaningless blogger bigot has to say. Because some other, slightly less irrelevant TV personality linked to his blog! He doesn't exemplify anything. You have it backwards.
While the dominant political faction in the United States built itself and continues to feed and nourish itself with this sort of endless exploitation of racial resentments and grievances
Grievances which Obama himself said in his speech are completely understandable...
let's spend the next eight months talking about the controversial comments of a single, comparatively powerless black preacher and have our presidential election decided by that.
He may be single but he's not singular; he exemplifies, to use your word, thousands of black preachers and the views of millions of blacks*. I actually have a fair amount of sympathy for these views, but they're not uncommon. As for powerless, he has the ear of our would-be future President, but it's not really about what power he has, but whether Obama exercised good judgment in going to this church. And I still don't think Obama explained that decision very well. His excuse is that disowning Wright would be tantamount to disowning the black community (and analogous to disowning his grandmother), but no one said he should have disowned Wright, just that he should've left the church. Then his other excuse is that Wright's a learned ex-Marine who did a lot of good stuff, helped people with HIV, held day care programs, and so on. That's great, but I'm sure there were less radical churches, with just as educated pastors, that also did a lot of social work in the neighborhood.
* For instance, if we're going to start quoting bloggers, here's what a very popular hip-hop blogger, Byron Crawford, had to say about all of this:
I’ve heard that he was one of these people who claim that the government invented AIDS, which is just impossible to prove....Otherwise though, I’m having a hard time finding a fault with anything this guy has said. And you know I tried. That shit he said about this country being founded on racism? I find that to be true. Same thing with that shit he said about how the US had 9/11 coming: I didn’t want to believe that was true, since I live here and all. But as an adult, and as an educated person, I’ve got the emotional maturity to accept that it is. Even that shit he said about the CIA flooding the ghetto with drugs has been fairly well-documented.
Is Obama saying this shit is definitely not true? And if so, how do you reconcile your support for him with the fact that you know how to read?
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Also, Mr. Reynolds Didn't Link To That Post
[Read the article: One of Instapundit's favorite blogs speaks on race]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]He linked to another one, and the post you're writing about wasn't even written by the guy who wrote the post he did link to. It's a group blog. What you're doing is roughly analogous to bashing someone because he linked to a Paul Krugman op-ed on nytimes.com, because, on the same site (nytimes.com), there's a Bill Kristol op-ed that you don't like.
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Except, You're Not Applying The Right's Standards, You're Applying Something Way More Nuts
[Read the article: One of Instapundit's favorite blogs speaks on race]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There are different types of guilt by association. If there's a real association, guilt by association can make some kind of sense. Obama and Wright have a very real association, and questions about whether Obama agrees with what Wright says, or at least thinks that Wright's views are acceptable, are fair questions. Is it fair to assume that Obama agrees with Wright? Of course not, but the association does raise legitimate concerns. Linking to a post on Blog Z written by blogger X, however, does not constitute a real association with a blogger Y who also posts on Blog Z. For that matter, it doesn't even constitute much of an association with blogger X. And before someone says I'm missing the bigger picture and all you're trying to show is that he's in the mainstream because a well-known blogger linked to his thoughts on Easter, just because a well-known blogger links to something doesn't necessarily mean it's not obscure and unread. All you've managed to prove in this post is that there is still one honest-to-god bigot left in America. If he 'exemplified' anything, you'd think you'd be able to find more non-obscure examples of stuff like it.
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The Typical Story
[Read the article: Of condoms, Clinton, Obama and McCain]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Obama doesn't have a position or a record; Hillary does.