Letters to the Editor
SMac
Published Letters: 32 Editor's Choice: 5
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Yet another existential threat?
[Read the article: Why Israelis believe they're right]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Dr. Freedman explains the Israeli consensus behind this war as due to the existential nature of the threat facing Israel today: essentially, he's claiming that Israel is today facing non-rational actors bent on the country's destruction, and so the normal calculus of war and peace doesn't apply.
Problem is, we've heard all of this before. In every military crisis that Israel has been involved in since 1967 at least, the same sense of crisis is invoked: this is a new situation, this time it's _really_ a threat to Israel's survival, this group of opponents really is nuts, we have to take the gloves off. And some converted doves are (yet again) trotted out as justification.
Over this period, Israel's strategic situation has steadily improved, to the point where today it faces no serious military threat to its existence from anywhere and where its main security challenge has been dealing with people whose land the Israeli state annexed in 1967. And so the Middle East is back to the same exchange: 10 Israeli artillery shells reply to each incoming rocket (whether in Gaza or Lebanon), the IDF practises Schrecklichkeit over the roads of southern Lebanon, and the only justification is: but this time the threat is really serious!
Fortunately or unfortunately for Israel, the threat has changed. The state of Israel is not the underdog any more. Now Israel is more like Britain during the Mandate, flailing around in the ruins of the King David Hotel and wondering about the irrationality of the terrorists it's itself produced.
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Canadian UN e-mail
[Read the article: The "hiding among civilians" myth]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]A quick note... the (never publically released) e-mail sent from the Canadian UN observer killed in southern Lebanon didn't in fact say that there were Hezbollah fighters around the post that was destroyed. That was the _interpretation_ put on the e-mail by Lewis Mackenzie, who besides being a retired general was also a failed Conservative candidate for Parliament - and who is vurulently anti-Arab. That interpretation is now being trumpeted as if it were fact.
One might note as well that, if Mackenzie's interpretation is correct, it indicates that Israel destroyed that post deliberately: that it was not, after all, a 'mistake'.
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Hypatia, how do you know all that?
[Read the article: Ask the pilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]How do you know that the Muslim passengers on that flight in Malaga wore jackets in order to intimidate other passengers? Or that Raed Jarrar was trying to provoke a confrontation?
Answer is: you don't. It's simply a (pretty unconvincing) way for you to excuse bigotry on the part of airline passengers on those flights.
Fact is, there's no rule prohibiting wearing a jacket on a hot day, or wearing a t-shirt with Arabic writing on it. The passengers involved are ignorant bigots, that's all, and the airlines involved shouldn't have caved in to such bigotry. I hope that, the next time you're on a plane, you'll restrain the impulse to ruin someone's trip because they're 'flying while Muslim'.
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'Beyond the pale'
[Read the article: "Murder in Amsterdam"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Golden Boy: "...to paint this human rights activist as a front for right-wingers, is beyond the pale."
Right. I mean, she'd never emigrate to the United States to shill for the American Enterprise Institute, would she?
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Muslims... the worst people in the world?
[Read the article: "Murder in Amsterdam"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Golden Boy: "...aligning yourself with Muslims in order to score points against the AEI puts in the company of the worst people in the world."
Man, there's a statement. Every time I think that I might be overestimating the hatred of Muslims in America today, someone comes along and reassures me.
In any case, I entirely support Hirsi Ali's right to shill for anyone she wants to, free from harassment: a person has to make a living. The developing market for attractive female apostates from Islam, willing to tell conservatives what they want to hear about that religion, will no doubt gainfully employ some folks: maybe AEI will hire Irshad Manji, too. All of this makes it easier to justify harassing Muslims in both North America and Europe, andto kill them in the MIddle East but what the hey? They're the worst people in the world, right?
The rest of your letter consisted largely of a list of awards culled from the Wikipedia site, and insinuations that the deaths of von Gogh and Fortuyn were part of a wider Islamic terrorist conspiracy. Not much to work with, there.
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There's no need to apologise for Islam...
[Read the article: "Murder in Amsterdam"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]or for any other religion. People take things, good and bad, from religions, and the actions that result can be good or evil.
One constant, though, is that hatreds - Muslims for non-Muslims, non-Muslims for Muslims - eventually become indistinguishable from one another. The preaching of some Islamic extremists make a fool think that the death of Theo van Gogh would be justified; the preaching of some Jewish extremists make a fool think that the deaths of Mohammed Mansour, Bassem Tuwafshe, Khalil Alulwil, and Osama Tuwafshe (ever hear of them?) would be justiified; the preaching of Christian extremists make fools think that the deaths of innocent Muslims in Iraq are justified.
Hate is hate. Some Muslims hate you: you hate all Muslims. You get points for a lack of direct violence, but I can't see much difference in the principle.
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"...I do hate their vicious abortion of a religion."
[Read the article: "Murder in Amsterdam"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think that that said just about all that needs to be said.
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Methodologies...
[Read the article: Study: 655,000 Iraqis have died as a result of war]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The methodology in this case really isn't that unusual: it's not exactly the same as that used in for example political polling in the United States, but it's not far off - and, as the paper notes, it's exactly the same methodology as used to estimate deaths in other conflicts, including Kosovo and Darfur. If you believe those numbers, there's no reason not to believe the numbers in this paper (subject, of course, to the usual caveats about the statitical uncertainties involved).
The methodology is quite different from that used by Iraq Body Count, and IBC has been careful to point out that their totals are certainly underestimates of the total deaths resulting from the invasion. I think one of the most significant elements here is that the casualty trend lines (the changes in rates of casualties per time period, independent of the actual numbers) is very similar in this study, the IBC counts and DoD counts of casualties.