Letters to the Editor
-
To quote our esteemed Vice President
So?
-
Our Fault
As long as we keep buying, they will keep printing. As long as we keep watching, they will keep broadcasting.
-
Re: Jim White
To answer your question ("So?"), I guess for me I'm *so* sick of a corrupt claque of columnists dominating the public intellectual life of our country. 300 million people, and you're telling me that these are the best and brightest? When the truth seems to be, as this column proves again, people like Brooks aren't so much insightful as endlessly prolific improvisers on the same two note shtick. They are incapable of critiquing the world as it is, because they are obsessed with retelling the stories that have won them their prominence.
Term limits, I say, for columnists! The NYT would serve its readers and the world better by allowing for more, fresher, and less venal points of view.
-
You're wrong, GG
Senator McCain's foreign policy differs dramatically from Bush's. It doesn't matter how similar they look. McCain is a maverick, therefore his policies are -- by definition -- dramatically different.
-
A man of contradictions
I wonder if the League of Democracies will include some of those very countries whose leaders McCain won't sit down with, or if it will only include nations that elect leaders we like. Sounds like a great plan built on Goldberg's extensive knowledge of history and government.
And, speaking of not sitting down with leaders, why is McCain willing to plop the Shiites and Sunnis in a chair and sit between them when the only way he'll deal with Iran is to threaten to bomb them if they don't cooperate? What is it about Iran that would make that nation unwilling to deal given the threat of force where the Iraqi factions haven't been willing to deal given the evidence of that force?
-
"You talkin' to me?"
"One of the things I would do if I were President would be to sit the Shiites and the Sunnis down and say, 'Stop the bullshit.'"--John McCain
Since John McCain doesn't know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite I suppose each would be looking back over their respective shoulders and saying something like, "You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? Then who the hell else are you talkin' to? You talkin' to me? Well I'm the only one here. Who the fuck do you think you're talking to?"--Travis Bickle
-
100 Years
Krauthammer in today's NYT calls it a "dirty lie" to say that McCain wants to continue this occupation for 100 years, when what he really means is that the wants to continue this occupation for 100 bloodless years, and points to Germany and Japan. (Okinawan rape victims don't count, of course.)
But these are not the relevant examples. The relevant example is the Philippines. Dexter Filkins interviews Allawi:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9900E1DE123EF934A35753C1A9619C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=6
''It was doomed,'' Allawi told me. ''What was doomed was the attempt to refashion Iraq in a sort of civilizational makeover, using American power in an alliance with a supposedly grateful Iraqi public, led by a Westernized middle class. The assumption turned out to be false. And it was compounded by a series of disastrous decisions.''
I sat with Allawi for two hours, sharing coffee and chocolate pastries. It was a deeply depressing experience. Allawi tried as hard as any Iraqi to make a go of the new Iraq, and he is thoroughly disillusioned. He says he is resigned to the likelihood that Iraq will end up a sort of protectorate of the United States for the next several decades, not unlike the Philippines was for much of the 20th century -- dependent, violent, crippled. ''The history of the Philippines,'' he noted, ''is not a happy one.''
-
Here's something McCain said that I agree with (sort of, and with a twist)
Our goal must be to win the "hearts and minds" of the vast majority of moderate Muslims who do not want their future controlled by a minority of violent extremists.
But I have to change it a bit. As a member of the vast majority of moderate Christians, I do not want my future controlled by a minority of violent extremists. That means that McCain, Brooks, Cheney, Bush, Kagan, Kristol, Goldberg and their friends just need to STFU and let the adults take over. That crew is bereft of both hearts and minds; no wonder then that they are trying to win some through misplaced war.
Anyway, let's ask Karen Hughes how well her job went. Who would have this job under McCain? Podhoretz?
-
(Correction)
Where by Iran being "unwilling" to deal, I mean "willing". There's no reason to expect that threatening Iran without directly talking with its leaders -- especially if your response to a civil war is (rationally, though in this case likely futile, given the extensive history involved) to try to get the parties together.
-
@ John Randolph
Term limits, I say, for columnists! The NYT would serve its readers and the world better by allowing for more, fresher, and less venal points of view.
That's a very ... charming idea. But would it serve their owners and advertisers better?
(Sorry, I seem to have poured cynicism on my cornflakes this morning instead of milk.)
-
@RyanHartman
Our Fault
As long as we keep buying, they will keep printing. As long as we keep watching, they will keep broadcasting.
-- RyanHartman
Is this another one of those, 'Just ignore them and they will go away' comments?
-
But...
But in a country entertained by 'the box', that great oracle in everyone's living room, that trainer of the 3 second attention span, all the details are lost...
Yes 'most' Americans hate the war but the success of the republican programming that not supporting the raping of the national treasury by the Bushist corporations is not supporting the troops and, well, we just have to support those troops, and it's the democrats that don't support those pawns in Bush's gambit to destroy America and the world to bring back 'his' God to save the chosen people's asses plays well to the programmed masses who dutifully fight tax hikes and democrats with their yellow ribbon made in China stickers and remaining 'W 04' stickers next to them. People who tragically don't grasp the idea that voting for McCain is like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders.
Doesn't it sound like a 'B-grade' Hollywood movie? It can't be because Hollywood, as any rightwing tool knows, is a liberal snake pit that should be bombed into submission. After all there are plenty of more interesting movies to be made like Bush's life story and the Cheney version of Watergate and one of the 'Bush Dynasty' and one about Barney's rise from the basement pen of the dastardly liberal puppy mill breeder he was rescued from.
America is very much a product of it's programming and a victim of it's own intellectual laziness. Why do you think people publicly profess to believe that the sun revolves around the earth and that, despite daily reminders of it, that we are not descended from animals.
It would be comic if it wasn't happening here...
Well and then there is Hillary Clinton who isn't running to win the 2008 election but the one in 2012. Provided the United States lasts that long.