Letters to the Editor
midnight04
Published Letters: 200 Editor's Choice: 9
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Being at home
[Read the article: The Obama difference]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There is something very attractive about a person at home in his or her own skin. It's a sense that the person is consistent and authentic. There are no hidden agendas, both personally and interpersonally. It's what got an imbecile like George Bush elected -- his is able to pretend that authenticity well enough to get people to trust him.
Of course, when such a person begins to screw up under the pressure of reality, the illusion falls apart but I don't see that in Obama. He is aware of himself. He has had to ask himself questions on the way to an identity. He has succeeded as a husband and as a father. He has succeeded, as well, as a lawyer, a teacher and a legislator.
He is not afraid to surround himself with competent people. Recruiting is not a locker room process of only recruiting those whose organs of generation are smaller. Obama will be able to hear competence and respond to it. That was the gift of John Kennedy -- he surrounded himself with able people. When they messed up, he jettisoned them but he was always aware of who was responsible. I think Obama has the same capacity and I don't think Hillary Clinton does.
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Anything we can do?
[Read the article: A truth teller who deserves justice]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Who can we pepper with emails and letters and where should they be sent?
I can't march in a demonstration but I am very capable of putting words down on paper (or on the computer).
Gitmo is a stain on my conscience as an American. It is a stain on the Constitution that shapes my rights and responsibilities as a citizen of this nation. The entire Bush administration is an even bigger stain, of course, but I can do something about this.
I suggest we find out what we can do and do it.
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It may not be a woman, Joan
[Read the article: Americans more ready for a black president than a woman?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It may be that THIS woman is more difficult to handle than another. If someone like Olympia Snowe were running, she might have a better time of it and be accepted more easily. Hillary is divisive and I don't think it's her chromosome that does it. If Condi Rice tries to run on the Republican ticket as a VP candidate, she may run into a buzz saw because of competence issues but she will not run into one because of her personality or her gender.
Karen
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Yo!
[Read the article: Through a bong, darkly]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The decade brought about the struggle for civil rights writ large and the anti-war movement. I would say that we didn't learn enough and not that the lessons weren't there to be learned.
We are facing some of the same issues -- a malignancy in the White House, lives wasted in Iraq, the slow expansion of the split between rich and poor. So what are we going to do about it? Are we going to go inward and protect what we have from the greater world?
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Sins
[Read the article: Conyers sends out invitations to a great party]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There are sins of which we are all convicted because we allow them. We may not be the immediate perpetrators but we allow those who are to go unpunished. Thus we are all under the shadow of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. We are complicit in every rendition. We are to blame because the people who did it are still doing it and because the people who ordered it are not in front of a judge.
Until John Yoo, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and George Bush stand stripped of the epaulets of office and have to answer for what was done, the rest of us, silent co-conspirators, are on the hook for what was done in our name.
What is worse, unless these bastards are tried, there is a possibility that future office holders may do the same. One of the most horrible lines in Orwell's "1984" was "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever."
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Please explain
[Read the article: Kristol plays the Marx card]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Why is this piece of garbage still running a column at the New York Times? One would think that the editors had given him a first amendment try at free speech and then just tossed him.
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Scapegoating
[Read the article: John Yoo: Spearhead or scapegoat?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]A scapegoat is an innocent animals sent into the wilderness laden with the sins of the people. Yoo is not a scapegoat in any meaningful sense because he is not innocent in any meaningful sense. He could have sung, "I would do anything for your love but I won't do that." Oops, wrong context. But the meaning works. He had a choice he could have refused to write the memo and said that it flouted the law, the Geneva Convention and the common decencies one owed other people.
He is thus responsible but, under the Roman principle that the author is as guilty as the actor in any evil conspiracy, Condi Rice, George Bush, Dick Cheney, George Tenet and everyone else who participated in the planning is at least as responsible and deserves to be punished at least as harshly as Yoo. It seems bizarre to me that only John Ashcroft, not known for his love of the Constitution, had the momentary decency to question whether it ought to be discussed in the White House. Then again, he also responded appropriately to a White House error during an agonizing bout of pancreatitis.
The Bush administration has a lot to answer for and I don't think they will. That's why a belief in God is so nice. Eventually justice is served even if you and I don't live to see it.