The following are a selection of letters sent to the World Socialist Web Site on several recent articles.
I commend Patrick Martin and the WSWS editors for the piece on Ann Coulter and company. Coulter’s comments should have been reported widely in the “liberal” press. Though I read the New York Times (especially the Op/ED) almost daily, I (or they) must have missed this one. These types of blood-curdling remarks, made as they were in the context of an organized political forum, must serve as a wake-up call to working and enlightened folks. These politically sick organizations and individuals clearly mean to do harm not only to misfortunate victims like John Walker, but to anyone standing in the way of America’s ruling elite.
As your article perceptively explained, these individuals fear the growing erosion of support for Bush/Cheney, which is becoming increasingly palpable. Quite naturally, Bush and the class whose interests he represents know that the current world economic crisis and social polarization between the classes demand resolute action. At the same time, political mutants such as Coulter use right-wing media outlets and these types of conferences to offer a new fascist ideology to the ruling class. Based on their frothing hatred for any progressive policy or sentiment that dares to even timidly rear its head in contemporary culture, one can only imagine how they might react to a bona fide social movement against imperialist war and social inequality. But then, again, Coulter just told us, didn’t she?
AR
28 February 2002
Your article on Ann Coulter’s speech at the recent CPAC conference is the single most disturbing thing I believe I have ever read. While not nearly as terrible as the death and suffering brought about by the recent US-led “wars” (I don’t remember congress declaring one in my lifetime) for oil, it somehow frightens me even more. That such racist, ignorant, and blindly hateful ideas have survived in modern America is beyond my ability to put to words. Not one word about this was uttered in the mainstream media. This at a time the cable news networks seemed to spend the entire weekend with panels of “experts” arguing over, what seemed to me, who could claim the mainstream media was the most lacking in conservative opinions and views. All the while they seem to forget that their extremely right-wing opinions are about all that gets any play anymore.
For the first time in my life I think I am truly sad to call myself an American.
HPV
United States of America
27 February 2002
I completely agree with those respondents who found the article on “Political reaction and intellectual charlatanry” to be an outstanding piece of political and cultural analysis (as is much of the other content posted daily). I sent a copy of that article to the four Harvard professors (Skocpol, Glendon, Putnam, Huntington), as I live right near that esteemed university, asking for comment or rebuttal. To date I have received none.
RR
27 February 2002
I, too, want to thank you for this lucid and important article. It seems now that every time I want a little fresh air for my brain, the WSWS provides it. With American academics issuing statements such as this, no wonder I feel like I’m in a science fiction film every time I turn on the television. Have you checked out any of the news stations recently (I’m sure you have)? More and more often, I am astonished at the lewd fiction being presented as news and information. I have never considered these presenters to be real news reporters, but the bizarreness has reached hallucinatory levels of late. Thanks for your sanity.
CZ
San Francisco
[On The “fog of war”—How the US media covers up civilian deaths in Afghanistan]
Your article on the US effort to deflect exposure of the killing of thousands of Afghan civilians is “right on target.” A major aim of this current Bush League “permanent War of Terror” is to block the eyes and ears of the already distracted public from seeing and hearing about the murder of (tens of) thousands of women and children by US-made weapons of mass destruction, by monopolizing the weapons of mass deception. Remember back in November the Pentagon went so far as to buy up all available photos from commercial satellites, so that no pictures exposing the US killing fields could reach the media outlets?
It seems the motto of the New World Order of W. and “slick Halliburton Dick” will be simply: “Diabolical power drops out of the belly of B-52 bomb bays; God Bless America!”
In peace & solidarity,
DL
Honolulu, Hawaii
To WSWS,
Often while watching the news I am given the impression that the Afghans welcomed the US bombs. They show jubilant scenes of a few people rejoicing and we are supposed to believe the majority of Afghans are happy. Well that is only for the naïve to believe. Perhaps the Northern Alliance and Ahmed Karzai are happy, but I don’t think the 2 million refugees in Pakistan are happy, nor the villagers whose homes have been destroyed, nor the children who now have no parents or the parents who now have no children. Nor the children whose limbs were blown off from the cluster bombs, nor the mothers who had to stir boiling water pretending they were making soup to silence the hungry cries of their young. Is this happy? How many orphans did this war create?
Entire families who lived in small huts made of mud were killed in seconds by US bombs. Does the media think that because these people don’t have very much money that somehow they feel less when they lose a loved one? How can it even try to justify the murder of these people? Shame on those who accept the excuses handed out by the mainstream media. It’s unacceptable. The American government and right-wing media are cowards—they won’t even admit the truth. How far have we come if dropping bombs on peasants makes you a hero? When the three peasants were recently killed on a hill, it was shrugged off by US officials, as if it was nothing. Who do they think they are? God? Then they accuse the terrorists of not having sanctity for human life. It’s this uncaring and selfish attitude by the west that has made it despised by many. It’s the fact that everything is judged by money, even the worth of human life.
I wonder what world I am raising my daughter in. America gains in strength and power every day, and soon it will be too late to stop it. Already it has satellites that can see every little thing we do. I pray that the world wakes up soon, because the US government is leading the world on a path of death and destruction. And just as it disregards the deaths of the Afghans it will disregard the deaths of others.
I am thankful for this web site, which has the courage to expose the lies of the US government and reveal the truth. Thank you!
M
26 February 2002