Letters to the Editor
Jeffrey P. Harrison
Published Letters: 354 Editor's Choice: 39
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Let me say this about that...
[Read the article: Chris Matthews on Fred Thompson's sexiness and smells]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm a Vietnam era vet who never went to Vietnam (thankfully). I was in Iran for their "civil insurrection" and had an opportunity to see a bit of the "blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth" as Arlo would have it. But I didn't come to talk about myself. I came to talk about Leonard Kawula, my late father in law. I didn't know the man very well since his daughter and I were into middle age by the time we married.
There are a few things I do know (much hearsay from my wife). He landed at Normandy in either the second or third wave and fought his way across France and into Germany. He was listed missing in action twice and collected two purple hearts and whatever else. Not a wimp. My wife has told me that growing up and afterwards he never said anything about his experiences in WWII. This became blindingly obvious to her when she was working in Germany and he came to visit - to visit his ancestral home in Poland (he was a first generation American). They also went into France and as they were walking through one of the battlefields on which he had fought, he said to her, "This is where my best friend died in my arms." It suddenly struck her that this was the first time he'd ever spoken about his experiences in WWII. Leonard's experience was not unique. I think many combat vets will be able to tell similar stories. The importance of this is not the experience itself. It's the fact that he never talked about it. No pumping fists, No strutting poseur. He knew the real thing and spent decades desperately trying to forget it.
In his library, he had a number of books by Bill Maudlin. One of the ones he had were both Maudlin's cartoons and his commentary. He devoted a whole section to the behind the lines heroes who were forever aggressive and ready to pick a fight while the real combat veterans were sitting in a corner getting drunk while they were recovering from the horrors they'd just survived.
And finally, I believe these fascist assholes who are constantly shooting their mouths off about going to war should be required to read "The War Prayer" by Mark Twain. It's a short story of 2 maybe 3 pages. But, if after reading it, they continue to shoot their mouths off, they should be institutionalized. They are not sane.
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It is way past time to slap these guys around.
[Read the article: Sen. Reid's crime]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Sen Reid's only crime was in not bitch slapping Tony Snow upside the head for:
Piss poor journalism - Snow quoted Politico, he didn't quote Reid
Not staying on subject - Snow criticized the fact of the Reid's criticism. He didn't address the criticism itself.
Had I been Sen Reid, I'd have said that I'd apologize for my remarks 30 seconds after the administration apologized for starting this stupid, illegal, immoral war.
This incident has several hallmarks of what the neocon gang does.
They attack the fact of the derogatory comment, not the derogation itself. In our sound bite world, the comments sound un-pc and God! we can't be un-pc. Then the commenter falls over himself apologizing and looks like a fool. And he is. This kind of crap has to be stood up to. You cannot allow the neocon gang to frame things. You must jerk the discussion back to what you said, not what they made what you said into.
Only the neocon gang can criticize. They'll generally only do this behind closed doors or, if it's out in the open, since they have neocon cred, the other members of the neocon gang won't become attack bots. Then, after some general or aide is cashiered, they'll start saying "Oh, well, this guy was incompetent." This is also known as backstabbing which many people actually find distasteful.
They use stunningly selective memory. If something that they've done or said in the past is inconsistent with the criticism that they are leveling, it is conveniently forgotten. But they reserve the right to remember it in the future without regard to the fact that they forgot it now.
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I am the fringe
[Read the article: "Fringe liberal bloggers"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I am anything but a liberal, I'm the other L word (no, not lesbian) - libertarian. I feel that the best structure for our governments, especially the central government, is small and relatively weak. I feel that the role of government is to provide a level playing field for everyone with a dead minimum intrusion in the daily lives of our citizens (certainly a lot less than we have today). Etc Etc
On the other hand, I couldn't agree with Digby more than I do. I've been saying the same things for years. If that makes me a liberal in some people's eyes, well, I guess, so be it.
This does raise an issue that I've complained about for years as well, definitions. When I was growing up, liberal meant favoring big government and significant governmental involvement in social issues. Conservative meant the opposite - small government and little governmental involvement in social issues. Probably that worked because both sides held a core set of values (rule of law, innocent until proven guilty, certain behaviors absolutely forbidden to the government as inherently evil/dangerous, etc).
Until the advent of the evil Shrubbites. The Shrubbites have exposed the true multidimensional nature of politics and the governance of the body politic. The advent of people who do not believe in what Mr. Greenwald has described as the core beliefs that have defined America in the past will, I think, force a redefinition of what it means to be liberal. It may also force the use of additional categories to describe people's politics that have not heretofore been used. My vote for a category addition is the one I use for the Shrubbites: Fascist.