Now Is the Time for a Left-Right Alliance
Although I am a devout liberal, it nearly brought tears of joy to my eyes to read your article and realize that the Honorable Conservative was not a myth nor even extinct, but possibly alive and fighting the good fight.
In another time and place I would take great pleasure in arguing your assertion that the media is Left-dominated, when clearly it’s controlled by a craven oligopoly whose values might be summarized as the antithesis of your Rebel Alliance’s common ground.
Today though, I will just give a silent prayer of thanks, and drop a donation into the Antiwar.com coffers.
Dear Mr. Eddlem,
I am about as left as they come. That being said, I am positively inspired by your recent article at Antiwar.com, “Now Is The Time for a Left-Right Alliance.” I agree with you 100% on the five issues you addressed as common left/right ground.
That being said, I think that what we have in common – the 75% that you and I agree on – are the rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. We always have had this in common and we always will have this in common. It is sad that we, as a country, have allowed the Washington elite to divide us into left and right, red and blue, Democrat and Republican camps.
Debate in this country has been reduced to “you’re wrong, no you’re wrong.” We are at each other’s throats so much that we ignore things that attack the very heart of our Constitution.
Yes, there are issues that we disagree on. As long as we are focused exclusively on those issues, we are in danger of losing our freedoms.
In light of that, this Rebel Alliance is something that, if formed, we should allow to become semi-permanent in regards to the issues that we all agree on. We can quibble about the issues that divide us when those issues are on the table. However, we will serve our country better if, even as we argue, we continue to work together to prevent future assaults on the Constitution.
Thank you for your article.
~ R. Kevin Doyle, Honolulu, HI
When the Washington Post published this article on the IAEA 4/28/06 report, I wrote to the reporters asking them how they knew the contents of a report that had not yet been circulated. (Did I say that I no longer trust the MSM?) They sent me back this link to the “un-circulated” report: http://www.isis-online.org/publications/iran/IAEAreport28Apr06.pdf. …
Gordon Prather replies:
The Washington Post article by Daphna Linzer and Molly Moore you cited is not the inflammatory warmongering off-the-wall article by Moore that I cited. Perhaps the Post has belatedly realized that Moore is a dolt and has provided adult supervision.
“In December 1998, Britain and America launched air strikes against Saddam’s regime after it expelled UN weapons inspectors – and Blair justified these attacks as part of an effort to ‘stop Saddam Hussein from… developing nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.'”
I am appalled to see a writer on this site propagating another of the myths created by the right-wing press in USA. The UN weapons inspectors were withdrawn by the UN in December 1998 because Clinton and Blair were about to launch their Operation Desert Fox airstrikes. It is simply a falsehood to claim that the inspectors were “expelled” by Iraq.
It is true that the UN weapons inspectors did not return for several years, as Iraq quite reasonably argued that if the Desert Fox strikes had destroyed suspected weapons development sites, which was the objective claimed, then there was no need for inspectors to return. In retrospect, it is obvious that this was a colossal miscalculation by Clinton and Blair. The hiatus in hard intelligence from Iraq led to the manipulation of unreliable and false information provided by expatriate Iraqis, with disastrous consequences. It should be noted that Operation Desert Fox never really came to a specific end, as bombardment continued at an elevated level right up to the invasion of ground forces in 2003. It should also be noted that there was no legal coverage for these airstrikes: indeed the north and south “no-fly” zones never had any legal basis in UN Resolutions or elsewhere.
Saddam’s regime certainly did object to some aspects of UNSCOM operations in the 1996-1998 period, but it is important to note that his key objection, that the mission was being subverted by espionage activity on behalf of USA, has been thoroughly vindicated by the accounts of Scott Ritter, who has explained in detail precisely how the CIA had infiltrated the inspections operations not only to gain illicit intelligence, but also to conduct covert insurgent operations against the Iraqi regime. Saddam actually perceived the inspections as a necessary means to achieve the objective of persuading the UN to terminate the crippling sanctions that had driven Iraqis into profound poverty; yet he could not tolerate the use of the UNSCOM operations to sabotage his government.
By repeating the right-wing myth, Brendan O’Neill himself lets Blair off the hook for the 1998 airstrikes.
~ John Cowin