Letters to the Editor
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Fellow Liberals
Just say Saudi Arabia and the conservatives scurry back to their trailers. Pointing out that the Bush Administration, and almost all US administrations since time immemorial, supports Saudi Arabia, even going as far as arming them to the teeth, causes the conservative brain to evaporate, for it is already liquefied.
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Religion and War
It is correct that the practices of Radical Islam are abhorrent in terms of the treatment of women. However, let us not go preening to much about the barbaric behavior of those who are foreign to us. In the good ol' bible belt of Fundamentalist Christianity (the brand to which our Idiot-Child Emperor subecribes) women are frequently blamed when they are raped. Honor killings happen among all stripes of fundamentalist religion whether it is a Pakistani family hanging the "promiscuous" black sheep of the family, or the Alabama farmer shooting his lesbian daughter.
Honestly, if you had that Pakistani family and that farmer sit down and discuss their views on morality, you would find overlap in almost every area aside from prayer techniques, food/drink restrictions and the name of the imaginary authority figure in the sky.
When religion makes its way into the world of law and politics, you are going to have problems. It is not a Muslim judge who has banned the use of the words "rape" and "victim" at a rape trial (though "sex" and "intercourse" are fine). It is not a secular president that has launched our latest crusade.
Our enemy here is a religious one, but if we make this a religious war, we are guaranteeing a conflict for countless generations.
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RobertEastVillage
I agree that in historical terms the "sacrifice" we're making is not particularly large -- for Americans, anyway. (The half million or so dead Iraqis and the multitudes of injured/maimed and dispossessed surely must count for something, however.)
But the question has never been about HOW MUCH we are sacrificing -- the question is, what are we sacrificing FOR?
I looked for the answer in your letter, and again found only vagaries about the Iraqi insurgency, doomsday predictions of a new Iranian-led Taliban running Iraq and launching attacks against the West from the new Terrorist Disneyland that Iraq is sure to become as soon as we leave...
To clarify: The insurgents are not Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda are not the insurgents. The insurgents will not "follow us home" after we leave, and Al Qaeda is not dependent on any potential future Iraq training grounds to launch attacks on the West.
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Iraq and the "War on Terror"
First, Iraq has nothing to do with fighting terrorism. NOTHING. Yeah, people calling themselves Al Qaeda are now in Iraq, but they do not now nor have they ever constituted anything more than a small minority of combatants. But prior to our invasion and occupation they were not there, and in fact prior to the almost accidental success of 9/11 they were in severe disarray. Our murderous, mindless blundering in Iraq - 650,000++ civilians dead, Haditha, Fallujah, Abu Ghraib, Abeer Qasim Hamza, 4 million displaced persons, for starters - has been a recruiting tool for anti-American jihadists like no other. Just because it's a cliche to say we are making enemies faster than we can kill them - exponentially so, it would appear, given that half the globe now hates our guts - does not make it less true.
Second, you cannot, repeat cannot, apply state warfare to the problem of terrorism. It's like trying to take our horseflies with a chainsaw. Where an invasion and occupation made sense - the already destroyed and desperate Afghanistan, where serious (non-Halliburton) efforts at rebuilding might have actually helped our standing in the Muslim world - we totally botched the job, even so far as to let Osama Bin Laden escape. (How can anyone take the Bush administration seriously after watching Bin Laden escape and remain free for six years, not to mention aiding his family in fleeing the country?) Where we are weakest - our ports, chemical, and nuclear plants - Bush either wants to hand over security to foreign nations or let industry beancounters legislate their own "safety". If we want to protect ourselves, stop spending $12 billion a month on an occupation that we "lost" two years ago and start spending that money on security measures that make sense. Attacking Iraq was a bizarre and phony ploy that will never, ever bear fruit for us in terms of national security. Thank God the Bushies weren't in power in 1941 or their response to Pearl Harbor would have been to attack Ireland.
Beyond all that, however, the simplistic and racist notion that we are at war with irrational jihadists is simply nonsense. People who resort to terrorism do so for a number of reasons but they are almost always political and economic, with the veneer of religion as means of self-justification and promise of reward. If we want to win against jihadists, nothing would help our cause more than aligning again with Iran against Al Qaeda (as we did in the early days of the Afghan occupation), encouraging dissenters in that nation, who are many, and working toward true economic and political justice for Palestinians so that they and Israel can coexist in peace. Anything else is simply an excuse to be at war made by those that profit by it or those who are vicariously entertained by it.
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RE:Do facts matter?
Apparently not.
I see precious few in your nonsensical screed.
I would love to reply, but as is common of bullshitters, your bullshit runs long. (This is part of the craft -- make 20 arguments, and if I defeat 19 and forget to address the last, you will proclaim that I have no answer to your brilliant 20th point and therefore win the entire argument.)
And it's nearly 2 AM here in Japan, long past my bedtime.
I hope someone else will reply to destroy your steaming pile of silliness, but perhaps there is no need, as the readers of Salon generally know bullshit when they see it (although perhaps the existence of your letter disproves that assumption, seeing as how you, the poster of said letter, must naturally also be counted as a reader of Salon)...