Move to C.I.A. Puts Petraeus in Conflict With Pakistan

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/29/world/29petraeus.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=move%20to%20C.I.A.%20puts%20petraeus%20in%20conflict&st=cse

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 9:51 AM
Subject: re: Move to C.I.A. Puts Petraeus in Conflict With Pakistan
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

    If the goal is to give General Petraeus control of our drone program in Pakistan, we should give that program to the military, rather than move the general to the C.I.A.  Killing combatants is the job of our uniformed armed forces. Killing non-combatants is (if intentional) a war-crime.  A C.I.A. agent or contractor firing a missile from a drone is--in our own parlance--an "unlawful combatant", in violation of the Geneva Conventions.

Barry Haskell Levine

Obama’s Pentagon and C.I.A. Picks Show Shift in How U.S. Fights

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/28/us/28military.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Thu, Apr 28, 2011 at 9:36 AM
Subject: re: Obama’s Pentagon and C.I.A. Picks Show Shift in How U.S. Fights
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

    A system in which "American military and intelligence operatives are at times virtually indistinguishable from each other as they carry out classified operations" is a system in which we can't know who's responsible. That's intolerable. I suggest we eliminate the CIA entirely. The US army demonstrated in the case of Lt. Caley in My Lai that there is accountability for army actions. The CIA demonstrated in the case of Raymond Davis that an agent of the CIA can get away with murder and no one will hold him to account.

Barry Haskell Levine

Judging Detainees’ Risk, Often With Flawed Evidence

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/25/world/guantanamo-files-flawed-evidence-for-assessing-risk.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=judging%20detainees%20risk&st=cse

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Mon, Apr 25, 2011 at 9:05 AM
Subject: re: Judging Detainees’ Risk, Often With Flawed Evidence
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

   When judge Silberman said "candor obliges me to admit that one cannot help but be conscious of the infinitely greater downside risk to our country, and its people, of an order releasing a detainee who is likely to return to terrorism" he discounted the damage wrought to the credibility of the U.S. and to the Rule of Law in holding a man without due process of law. A judge operating from the posture of fear will always choose the Hobbesian autocratic state.  Cheney and his cronies spent years cultivating exactly judge Silberman's response.  Our Founding Fathers however held to a different vision, They saw that the individual's human dignity must be upheld even when that was inconvenient.  I am ashamed that we as a nation have lost that.

   Should we be surprised that 25% of the men released from Guantanamo have subsequently been accused of terrorism? If we had interned only innocent men, I would expect that some of them would emerge angry and violent. That's a fault of our detention program, not of our release policies.

Barry Haskell Levine

Creed or Chaos

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/22/opinion/22brooks.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=creed%20or%20chaos&st=cse

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Fri, Apr 22, 2011 at 8:24 AM
Subject: re: Creed or Chaos
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

     If it were true, David Brooks' assertion that "[r]igorous theology helps people avoid mindless conformity" would be an extraordinary paradox. It is not.

Barry Haskell Levine

About My Support for Natural Gas

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/16/opinion/16nocera.html?_r=1&scp=3&sq=nocera&st=cse

- Hide quoted text -

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine <levinebar@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Apr 21, 2011 at 10:27 AM
Subject: re About My Support for Natural Gas
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:
  The world is indebted to Joe Nocera for his innovations in
rhetoric. He finds that he can dismiss professor Howarth out of hand
merely because Howarth has reached conclusions about the use of
natural gas that differ from Joe's.  This Nocera method cuts a world
of Gordian knots.  Palestinians don't need to talk to Israelis; once
they've ascertained that they're Zionists, the conversation is over!
Likewise, once Joe dismissed the environmental damage from gas
drilling as an externality, I can spare myself reading any more of his
crap.
Barry Haskell Levine

Iraq Steps Back Onto the Regional Stage

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/world/middleeast/12iraq.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=iraq%20steps%20back%20onto%20the%20middle&st=cse

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Tue, Apr 12, 2011 at 4:29 PM
Subject: re: Iraq Steps Back Onto the Regional Stage
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

     In the hands of a State Department spokesman, the English language is a powerful, subtle and flexible tool of the trade. It cannot however be bent infinitely without breaking. To call a force of 16,000 "embassy staff" in Baghdad doesn't pass the giggle test.  The Union army at the start of our Civil War was only 17,000.  The State Department may call them "contractors" or "military advisers" or "kittens", but the world will call them an occupying army.

Barry Haskell Levine

The Crisis Next Time

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/11/opinion/11mon1.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=the%20crisis%20next%20time&st=cse

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 9:46 AM
Subject: re: The Crisis Next Time
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

   When a brat demands cookies and ice cream for dinner, the parent who serves only ice cream and calls that "compromise" is a fool.  Mysteriously, this is what passes for Democratic leadership in Washington in this administration. Harry Reid countered every Republican threat of filibuster with pre-emptive surrender. Now president Obama has followed that lead on the budget.  President Hoover's message of austerity was always easier to explain than Keynesian economics. But that easy path leads ever downwards. We need to remember--now, while our economy languishes for lack of spending--that Hoover failed.

Barry Haskell Levine

Gates Says Some Troops May Remain in Iraq for Years

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/09/world/middleeast/09military.html?scp=1&sq=gates%20says%20us%20could%20keep%20a%20force%20in%20iraq&st=cse

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Sat, Apr 9, 2011 at 12:13 PM
Subject: re: Gates Says Some Troops May Remain in Iraq for Years
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

   A wave of revolutions across the Arab world has overturned many assumptions in that region. We should seriously re-weigh president Obama's promise to get our troops out of Iraq as this unfolds. Still, if that is the offer, I want my president to stand up and say that to me.  As long as he uses Secretary Gates as a hand-puppet to mouth the words, this relationship isn't working. 

Barry Haskell Levine

Rights Abuses Extend Across Middle East, Report Says

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/09/world/middleeast/09rights.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=rights%20abuses%20extend%20across&st=cse

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Sat, Apr 9, 2011 at 7:46 AM
Subject: re: Rights Abuses Extend Across Middle East, Report Says
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

   Americans should be troubled to learn that our key allies around the world continue to abuse human rights. Extra-judicial slaying mock both the structure of law and the dignity of each of us. I am concerned however that the State Department report assesses only our allies, and neglects to assess the actions of our own government.  As I write this, Anwar al-Awlaki is the target of a kill-order from our White House, yet he is a U.S. citizen and has been charged with no crime. That's not what I expect of my government.

Barry Haskell Levine

Cowardice Blocks the 9/11 Trial

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/05/opinion/05tue1.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=cowardice%20blocks&st=cse

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Tue, Apr 5, 2011 at 6:46 AM
Subject: re: Cowardice Blocks the 9/11 Trial
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

  In some alternative reality, the trial of Kaled Sheikh Mohammed in a Federal court might have been "the defining event of [Eric Holder's] time as Attorney General". In the current political reality, that has been precluded by Congressional grandstanding. All is not yet lost. AG Holder can still do much to restore our standing in the community of nations by prosecuting torturers; he can restore Civil Rights here in this country by throwing open and repudiating ten years of National Security Letters. His is a difficult office, in which the ever--changing "art of the possible" (i.e. politics) intersects with the eternal demands of Justice. It's not yet time to admit defeat.

Barry Haskell Levine

Secrecy in Shreds

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/magazine/mag-03lede-t.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=keller&st=cse

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Sun, Apr 3, 2011 at 5:28 PM
Subject: re: Secrecy in Shreds
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

   Some government actions are necessarily tactical secrets. In the case e.g. of troop movements, they should be automatically opened to the public at the end of hostilities. Other government actions are crimes. They should be thrown open to the sanitizing effect of daylight without delay when discovered. Anyone of even average intelligence can tell the two apart easily.  If Mr. Keller proposes to treat the two cases the same, perhaps it is not because he cannot tell the difference, but because he hopes to hide his own guilt in sending the American public to the polls in 2004 while he suppressed the story of warrantless wiretapping of citizens.

Barry Haskell Levine

In Israel, Time for Peace Offer May Run Out

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/world/middleeast/03mideast.html?_r=1&hp

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Sun, Apr 3, 2011 at 8:25 AM
Subject: re: In Israel, Time for Peace Offer May Run Out
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

   In 1947, the UN voted to partition Palestine. At a stroke it mandated the creation of a Jewish state, an Arab state and the international enclave of Jerusalem. Perhaps it was hubris to mandate what it had neither the means nor the spine to enforce. In 1948 that international enclave was seized by the army of Jordan.  Now, Britain France and Germany  propose to enforce--not the UN map--but the map drawn by the Jordanians by force.  Is this line imbued with some special legitimacy?  This season the UN has shown a new assertiveness in calling for a no-fly zone in Libya. Perhaps it has finally found the spine to enforce the solution it saw in 1947. To enforce the 1967 line seems an act of caprice.

Barry Haskell Levine