Mailbag
Obviously new reader Amit Singh writes
Yes, it’s all true what you said. The people in Iraq will despise American troops and turn on them with a vengeance. It happened in Afghanistan. Oh wait, no it didn’t. Well, it happened when we occupied Japan after WW2. Oh wait, it didn’t. Germany. Nah, that didn’t happen either.
What’s wrong with you liberals? You folks said the war would last for months. It took 21 dsys to take over Baghdad. It took 84 days for Allied bombing t o stop Serbia. It took the British 2 and 1/2 months to recapture the Falkland Islands. Heck, it took Janet Reno 45 days to torch those kids at Waco.
The occupation of Japan and Germany lasted years. It’s been two months and it’s Vietnam all over again? God damn it, that as 40 years ago.
Wrong about Cold War. Wrong about 9/11. Wrong about Afghanistan. Wrong about Iraq. Will you liberals ever admit that you’re wrong?
I’m told that H.L. Mencken kept a standard response card that he enclosed in all replies to reader complaints. It read You may be right.
John Emerson writes
Thanks for the heroin piece. I used to have a friend who was a medical student / alternative musician. He did research and found out that there is only one physical problem associated with careful use of heroin. After decades of regular use, a lung disease develops, though as I remember it was non-fatal and not very debilitating. (Keith Richard figured out the heroin rules right at the beginning and has never had a problem to my knowledge.)
The whole drug war is an attempt at an ideological purge or witchhunt. Since the American tradition and legal system do not allow the burning of heretics, certain physical objects associated with an attitude or way of life have to be made illegal. (In order to avoid the chemical-legal difficulties involved in specifying every single illegal drug all the way down to Hawaiian woodrose, about 1970 a legislator in the always-reliable state of Kansas introduced a bill making illegal the ingestion of any substance with the intention of getting high. But of course, that ruined the whole effect; we can only suppress intentions by outlawing substances).
I recall Keith Richards telling an interviewer once that he always cleaned up before entering the recording studio, and only did drugs to cope with the crushing boredom of touring. (I think this was in the classic collection of interviews with songwriters, Written in my Soul, by Bill Flanagan.)
Now, confession: I plan to read Sullum’s book. I thought his last one, For Your Own Good, was quite fine. But with a seven-year-old who is also an advanced reader, I intend to be careful about leaving it around the house. Some people will cry Hypocrisy! But it’s not hypocritical to believe that choices you don’t want loved ones to make should nevertheless be legal for people to make. I figure I have a couple of years to figure out how to explain this distinction in child-friendly language. It will be neither the hardest nor the easiest balance I manage as a parent.
Cowboy Kahlil wrote several bloggers asking
First, I’m trying to determine if email is a viable method of organizing left leaning folks.
Gee, I hope not. That’s the last thing we need, organized lefties - I like them much better in ones and twos.
Nick Sweeney was glad to read kind words for Richard Thompson.
I took my dad — a friend of Sandy Denny in the late 60s — to see him in Newcastle a couple of months ago, and it was great. (Better, of course, had we seen him solo, but you take what you’re given.)
I actually prefer Thompson live with a band. I’ve seen him once solo and twice the other way. The last time was the Mock Tudor tour with his son, Teddy and others (see a show from that tour here), plus one from the Gregson and Collister era.
Finally, Nell Lancaster writes about Ariel Sharon and the “O”-word:
I’m afraid that Sharon’s new frankness about occupation (and purported willingness to end it) is not really very good news. Apparently he wants to continue settlements and let The Wall handle the “occupying” job. Ampersand (Alas, A Blog) has a clarifying map, and a link to the Gush Shalom site with more information. I’m assuming part of our $3-$12 billion helps fund this…
I don’t doubt that Sharon will still try to hold onto everything he can, and that we’re far from out of the woods. (Ivan Eland says the US, Europe and Russia should just butt out until the Israelis and Palestinians are truly sick of war, which he doesn’t think has happened yet. He argues that a premature, forced “peace” deal that, say, immires US troops in the Levant would be far worse for America than the appalling status quo.) But I come back to Eve Tushnet’s principle of the salience of the rhetorical climate: it does, in fact, matter that Ariel Sharon formally, with whatever degree of sincerity, acknowledges the Occupation for what it is. That can lead in directions and distances he himself does not intend. (cf Gorbachev, Mikhail.)
