Letters to the Editor
thorin01
Published Letters: 154 Editor's Choice: 24
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How Dare Iraq Wear a Pretty Dress
[Read the article: Steve walks warily down the street, with the brim pulled way down low]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Yes clearly the failures in Iraq are all the fault of Iraqis. I mean they wore that pretty dress and hung out with all the bad boy nations in the Mid East. They were asking for it. Hell we’d even done it to them before, so it’s not like they don’t have experience. And now here they are, unable to get their act together and blaming us for the sorry state they’re in. We didn’t do anything wrong. Iraq wore a pretty dress and made us destroy their nation.
I am so sick and tired of the ‘blame the Iraqis’ mantra that comes from both Republicans and Democrats. We DESTROYED their country. Bomb their infrastructure into the dirt. Fired their army and anyone connected the Ba’ath Party (read everyone who actually worked in the government and knew how stuff worked). Failed to provide even the minimal level of troops needed to secure a country that size from the sectarian violence everyone (except the Neocons) saw coming a mile away. Stuck them with an unworkable constitution. Forced elections down their throats before they were ready which ended up enshrining ethnic tensions into law. Rounded up a tortured their citizens many without cause. Killed Allah knows how many civilians.
And after all that we’re blaming them because they can’t get the mess we created cleaned up fast enough to make Bush look like a hero.
Stupid country should never have worn that pretty dress.
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Because Motherhood Makes a Woman Unique
[Read the article: My sister! My daughter!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]One of the major reasons for the ‘fetishzation’ of motherhood and the fetus is because women have become increasingly successful in eliminating gender roles.
I know I’m going to get a lot of flack for that statement but it is true. As women are increasingly seen in what were traditionally male roles it becomes harder and harder to determine what separates them from men. If a woman can do anything a man can do than what makes her a woman? What makes a woman is the ability to bare children. That’s unique, a man can’t do that. It’s a reaction to the blurring of sexual identity in our society.
The flip side is things like ‘The Dangerous Book for Boys’ and similar works.
People (women and men) instinctively want to feel unique, special, distinct.
Women can be distinct and unique from men in their ability to have children.
Men get to be unique from women by engaging in ‘dangerous’ activities.
Of course the real fun begins when science develops an artificial womb and cloning technology.
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The Return of the Body Count
[Read the article: The NYT's growing pro-war fan club]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I take as one of the surest signs that we are loosing in Iraq to be the return of the ‘body count’ to military briefings. For the past four years US military commanders have scrupulously avoided the use of ‘body counts’ in describing the success of failure of military operations. This was to avoid the inevitable comparisons to Vietnam’s infamous ‘kill ratios’ and because most previous US commanders in Iraq (and even Rumsfeld, may he burn in hell) understood that ‘body counts’ are relatively meaningless, often misleading and come back to bite one in the ass when one learns that the ’20 insurgents’ killed were actually civilians or your own allies (a fact which is well documented in the reporting outside the US as Greenwald has previously noted).
The return of these ‘body counts’ over the last couple of months (the same time we started calling everyone we kill al-Qaeda) is the clearest sign that the Bush administration is getting desperate to show any kind of success. They can’t point to real political process, they can’t point to a decrease in violence, they can’t point to decreasing US casualties so they’re resorting to pointing to dead bodies on the ground and calling that ‘victory.’
What amazes me is that this shift in reporting from the Pentagon has gone virtually unnoticed by anyone in the media, including all the Vietnam era reports who should no better. The press latches on a reports these ‘body counts’ uncritically and without comment.
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Rhetorical Shift Only - NOT Action
[Read the article: GOP hawks' sudden conversion]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What you are seeing from Republican’s on the hill is largely a rhetorical shift. It will NOT be backed up by votes.
In the end the Republicans (and most of the Democrats) will vote to ‘support our troops’ with funding and ‘not tie the General’s/CiC’s hands’ with ‘artificial’ timetables. In other words it will be business as usual in Iraq. Reid already gave away the farm on this one when he bought into the whole ‘funding’ = ‘supporting troops’ and ‘restricting funds’ = ‘hurting troops’ mantra from the President.
Repeat after me, cutting funding only hurts our troops if Bush KEEPS them in Iraq without sufficient resources (which he’s ALREADY DOING!!!!, but that’s another discussion).
But since Democratic leaders have bought into and support the false funding argument they’ve freed Republicans to complain about the war but not actually do anything. Nice work Harry. With leaders like these the Democrats don’t need enemies.