Letters to the Editor
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When the Inmates Run the Asylum
Kamiya says "Talk of attacking Iran should be confined to the lunatic fringe." Oh, it is...it is. When we allow the lunatic fringe to overpower us, anything is possible. There is nothing too absurd nor too evil.
The only question left in my mind is: As we have allowed this cancer to spread unchecked and largely unchallenged, are we also part of the lunatic fringe?
Perhaps we are now all fringe and no doily...
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Oh so brave yet squeamish pols
This is a great essay, but you give Obama and Hagel too much credit. They're dancing around saying what needs to be said, possibly out of fear: as long as they don't call the administration on the lies they're telling about the supposedly imminent threat posed by Iran, they might as well be saying,
"we agree that Iran is an immediate threat, but you're going about this the wrong way."
Because that's what people will hear(and that's why Obama has essentially sunk his 2008 aspirations.*).
*Obama could call Bush a liar. Not only a liar, but a damn liar. And if Oprah or John Boehner or Nancy Pelosi told him he was being intemperate he could tell them to shove it. He'd go up 15 fucking points in 72 hours.
Because if Bush has succeeded in making people believe in the immediate threat, and it appears he has, and no one calls him on this directly, Obama and Hegel might as well be saying they voted "against it before they voted for it."
All they're doing is offering carefully calculated objections designed to encourage the insipidly wonkish to give them credit for opposing Bush, while ensuring that the broader American public doesn't actually notice any substantial objection or criticism to the run-up to another war.
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this is what happens when our system fails
Bush should never have been President. He's been a pretender for seven years. He lost in 2000, and he probably would have lost in Ohio had the GOP not engaged in illegal vote suppression.
This is what happens when a nutjob gets into the White House by deceit and fraud. Responsible members of Congress are supposed to fight this, as is an independent Judiciary, but the GOP managed to subvert every single check on the Presidency.
Our system failed. Completely. And we have probably not suffered the worst results of that failure yet.
Our locked-up two-party system is a big problem here. I'm not sure the founders realized what could happen to their carefully crafted systems when both Parties were co-opted by the wealthy, corporate class.
Our system has been broken. Utterly broken. And it's right that many of us should be anxious about that. We're in unexplored territory.
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It's not "we" or "us"
I've pointed out this tic of Gary Kamiya's before, and he obviously either doesn't care about it or can't help himself -- but it's particularly ironic, in an article that criticizes "us" for (among other things) failing to distinguish different groups that have different ideolgoies, to have the whole argument framed in a style of rhetoric that rests on that very same failing.
There is no "we/us" that failed to learn the lessons of Iraq -- and if there is, it isn't even close to well represented among Salon readers, i.e. the likely readers of this article. Positing such an "us," and writing as if "we" act as a single unit, is called "reifying," and, like any fallacy of oversimplification, it makes getting a grip on what's really happening much harder to do. By subsuming enormous political differences and complexities into one mythical entity, it de-politicizes the whole discussion -- and in a way that will be very welcome on the Right, which would love nothing better than to collapse the ceaseless clash of ideas and opinions in this country into a single Borg-like mush.
So, OK, go ahead and preach to the choir some more if it makes you feel better. Meanwhile, what we really need -- and what Salon could be providing (and occasionally does, though rarely under this byline) -- is a serious, closely observed analysis of the political forces and dynamics that are actually at work in these areas. You literally cannot offer any insight into that if you start with the assumption that whatever view happens to be driving policy at the moment is therefore, by definition, "ours."
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Iran wants nukes?
If Iran wants nukes give them nukes. Nuke the entire revolutionary guard and the all the mullahs to show what happens to a-holes who supply IED's and IED training to terrorists.
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Lunatic Fring Inside the Beltway
Mr. Kamiya:
Haven't you heard ? The death toll among Iraqi's has descended by 50%. No Problem ! The deaths and dismemberments of our military are rising so tolerably slowly that they hardly make the news in the past few months. Iraq has been largely stabilized, more or less - or maybe not, because we still hear dire warnings from the White House that "Al Qaeda in Iraq" is a terrible threat - but we read now from some Iraqi fellows that "Al Qaeda in Iraq" has been essentially neutralized - or maybe not, because Sadr City is still a seething qualdron of hateful terrorists - or maybe not - but Iran is now the next bugaboo and we need to bomb them to set 'em straight and spread democracy - or maybe not. But really, everything's cool in EyeRack.
Confusing ? Ahh, but the White House and Beltway media PR stategy is working, isn't it ? Now that 52% of those polled think that we are justified in bombing Iran ! Three cheers for the most gullible mob of dysfunctional and disconnected boobs since Hilter convinced the German people that the "Juden" were the perpetrators of all their problems.
The fact is that the White House, the leaders of the Republican Party, and the Washington media corps(e) ARE the very lunatic fringe to whom to you refer. They have no desire to govern in any sane sease, but they have one hellofva great PR army and are indeed running the country out of the Washington asylum.
By now, Americans should realize that the country is being run by loonies - - at their expense in dollars and the lives of loved ones. Unfortunately, the problem is that our fellow citizens are either not paying proper attention or they are just as dunderheaded as the Cheney/Bush ideologically driven morons in the WH.