Backtalk, August 23, 2007

Why Interventionism Fails

There is another reason that foreign intervention has not and will never work:

What would most Americans do if any foreign power was to come to our land and start to make decisions on our behalf? Answer: We would work night and day tirelessly and with all the resources and tactics at our disposal (terrorist tactics for sure) to throw the bums out.

Example: A no-fly zone is enforced over south Florida by Cuba. What would we do?

Why in heaven’s name does anyone think that people in other lands are so different from us?

~ Bob Mervine


What to Do With Cheney?

Very interesting article by John Utley on the value to Republicans of impeaching Cheney, and the dynamics of the Republican split over the Middle East War. However it strains credulity when he takes two pages of print to discuss impeachment of Cheney without even mentioning the bill of impeachment that Congressman Dennis Kucinich introduced in the House, a bill which has 14 or 15 sponsors now and is only a signature from Congressman Conyers away from being introduced in the House. Mentioning this and encouraging constituents to bring pressure to support it would help to move it forward. Not mentioning it is reminiscent of the major media’s practice of never mentioning Kucinich’s name, no matter how relevant, in an apparently deliberate (and so far successful) effort to smother his antiwar presidential campaign. Coming from Antiwar.com this behavior is at best peculiar.

~ Chris Horton


Etc.

I listened with interest to Scott Horton’s interview with Stu Bykofsky. It was impressive to hear Scott Horton hammering those points home. As for Mr. Bykofsky, he came across as not only ignorant but arrogant as well. He did not contribute anything worthwhile to any of his “arguments.” So this guy, with his “real job,” is a well-known U.S. journalist? I am a Swiss resident so maybe the subtleties of U.S. journalism are lost on me.

Keep up the good work at Antiwar.com and Antiwar Radio! You are the real thing.

~ Marina Montero

Scott Horton replies:

Thank you very much.

I would prefer it if my government’s foreign policy more closely resembled your own.

Charlie Rangel is right: we need to have national service in order to make our elite responsible for sending American girls and boys into combat. Warmongers who watch the bloodletting as they sit in their dens, knowing it’s the poorer kids from across town who are doing the dirty work, are free to indulge their fantasies without suffering the consequences themselves. Antiwar.com helps these warmongers by using sophistry to fight against Charlie Rangel’s proposal harder than warmongers fight for their own objects. It will be no great loss if Antiwar.com sinks and the elitists who run it lose their voice.

~ Willis Wade

Eric Garris replies:

The crimes of the warmongers do not justify slavery of innocents anymore than the crimes of al-Qaeda justify the bombing of innocent Iraqis.

Jeremy Sapienza replies:

People who call for the draft so that the elite’s children can be sent to war don’t understand the meaning of the word “elite.”

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