Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 292 Editor's Choice: 33
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War is our only product
[Read the article: Does a bigger Army mean another Iraq?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Apart perhaps from entertainment media, war is the only profitable product left on America's assembly lines. We've fallen behind in technology, manufacturing, automotives, science, and soon will in agriculture. War and its adjuncts is last reliable employment and innovation sector where we lead.
Naturally, we need the workforce and the market for our product line. This means expanding the size of the standing army as well as the mil-ind complex, and opening new theatres of operation. When your only winning product is war you've got to be aggressive in looking for places to market it.
A store that has everything riding on one product will inevitably go bankrupt. But as long as it's making a profit it won't think its business model is flawed, and instead will keep making more and more of that product to maximise the current revenue flow.
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Next they'll solve global warming
[Read the article: It's the thought that counts]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]with a strongly worded recommendation to the polar bears to "please stop drowning".
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You got it in one, bfree4me
[Read the article: What you missed while watching the new "Bionic Woman"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The next term is going to be an absolute quagmire for whoever wins (assuming there are elections). That's why I only half-jokingly keep suggesting that we just vote in a Republican. That way the stink will stick to them and their party at last, and they'll spend their whole term trying to at least put the brakes on so that they're not exiled to the wilderness eternally.
If a Democrat gets in I fully expect the media and just about everyone else to lay the war and the pillaged economy at their feet, and the consequence will be a one-term lame duck President, a lost Congress, and a worse president in 2012.
I'm tired of the cycle of Republicans breaking shit, Democrats fixing it, and the country immediately forgetting so that the next wave of cons are set up to loot it all over again. Keep these bastards in their room until they fix what they break, and if they won't, get rid of them forever FULL FUCKING STOP.
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DNC, you are on notice
[Read the article: The presidential Hillary Clinton?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If you stump up the DLC/AIPAC/Trilateralist stalking horse HRC, I'm voting something else. This is no longer an idle threat. I'll vote Green, Libertarian, American Socialist or Natural Law party before I collaborate in getting another Beltway warmonger into power.
If she wants to be a warlord, give her a box of rifles and an opium field in Afghanistan. If she wants to represent Israel, move her to Tel Aviv. If she wants to talk for hours and say nothing, book her on Crossfire.
Do anything you want with her. Just don't make her the candidate for President.
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Clarification
[Read the article: What you missed while watching the new "Bionic Woman"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Just to make things clear, I am not saying "Let's all vote in a Republican so that we can magically wake up America to how much Republicans suck". Because no amount of miracles is going to wake up this country. Not another botched presidency, not another terrorist attack, not even aliens landing on the White House lawn, will ever get enough American heads out of asses to make a difference. Not while we have corporate media and election-by-dollars.
What I AM saying is "The next Presidential term is a death trap". I don't see any candidate on either side who will come out this term a winner, or indeed a survivor. At least, not any candidate that stands a chance of being elected. And there's the problem right there - any candidate who stands a chance of doing anything good is no longer electable under our current system.
So go ahead and pony up a Democrat for president. But unless you change the rest of the system here, particularly the media, you'll be waking up one day to the Republican Congress of 2010 impeaching their second President Clinton and America waiting to elect their next drinking-buddy emperor.
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What doesn't "support our troops" any more?
[Read the article: Jenna Bush is just not the Winnebago-driving type]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The minimum requirement has been a magnetic ribbon for a long time now, so just about anything is "supporting our troops". Everyone can find an excuse short of actually signing up for service these days - become a "humanitarian worker" somewhere safe (and ideally with a happening nightlife), help Dad win an election, or join the Texas Air National Guard (just don't report for duty), those all "support our troops".
About the only way you can't "support our troops" any more is if you literally picked up a gun and went over there to shoot at them from the other side. Oh, or if you passed an act of Congress bringing them home. That's totally not "supporting the troops", either.
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If only
[Read the article: The war president "at peace" with himself]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]we had some mechanism by which to express our discontent at our rulers, or even remove them if they were dangerously criminal in their acts. I bet if we were a democracy we would have these options.
Yes, this is what an empire in twilight looks like. This is what it feels like to be a sane Roman, a responsible Weimar German, or a freedom-loving Burmese, awake and alert to the horrors around you but politically disempowered to stop it. Teenagers a century from now will read about America of this time and ask, "Why didn't the ordinary citizens stop it?" And the answer will be because you can't stop the engine of empire once it is running at full speed. It is a closed system that divides, isolates, and excludes until it is so hollow inside that it collapses in on itself.
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The military is a hierarchy as well
[Read the article: The U.S. military's role in preventing the bombing of Iran]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Which means, just like our government, the whole body can be altered by strategically replacing elements at the top. This will happen if the administration is thwarted for too long. Simply put, the system of checks and balances was never designed to counter an outright cabal of murderous imperialists ascending to power. One or two, yes, but not the entire ruling apparatus. So while the attack on Iran may be delayed, it will not be denied.
And just as an aside, your comment that we are "a country filled with war cheerleaders whose insatiable appetite for new military conflicts is matched only by their steadfast refusal to volunteer to fight" is beautifully succinct, if horrible in its reality.