: re: Obama Acknowledges U.S. Erred in Assessing ISIS

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Mon, Sep 29, 2014 at 5:30 PM
Subject: re: Obama Acknowledges U.S. Erred in Assessing ISIS
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

    Although it's easy to lose sight of it in the river of scandals, our NSA's core mission is Military Signals Intelligence. If--as president Obama has told us--the rise of ISIS caught us by surprise, the NSA has proven incompetent in its core mission. The debate America needs to be having is not whether the NSA should be given an ever larger role in our lives. Rather, we should consider whether we're being served for the billions we're spending. I think it's clear that we are not.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/29/world/middleeast/president-obama.html?_r=0

: re: Don’t Execute Those We Tortured

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Thu, Sep 25, 2014 at 7:39 AM
Subject: re: Don’t Execute Those We Tortured
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   The U.S. constitution give the president power to pardon anyone for any crime barring impeachment. But that same constitution requires that he/she must "take care that the laws be faithfully executed". It is not at his/her discretion to look forward and not backwards. So let president Obama pardon torturers if he thinks that's best for the country. But let him do that after they've been investigated and named and prosecuted and convicted. To do less would be to shirk his explicit job description.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/25/opinion/dont-execute-those-we-tortured.html?_r=0

: re: Wrong Turn on Syria: Helping Assad?

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 1:50 PM
Subject: re: Wrong Turn on Syria: Helping Assad?
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

    To an American raised on two-party politics, it's hard to conceive the dimensionality of politics on the Middle East. Even our court system assumes that once two sides have been presented and weighed, we can reach Justice. That's contentious here, and laughable in the Middle East. There are,  e.g., currently hundreds of factions who want Bashar al-Assad dead, each for their own (often valid) reasons, many of whom have no love for each other, either.

       The formation of ISIS has done the U.S. one favor. By self-segregating, the most objectionable elements have purified the Free Syrian Army of the terrorists whom we cannot be seen supporting. It's not a matter of backing one side or the other, but rather of picking our allies from a menu of hundreds. So far, president Obama has come up with a credible list.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/24/opinion/reluctantly-helping-assad.html?ref=opinion

e: A White House Position That Stands on a Narrow Definition of War

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 8:07 AM
Subject: re: A White House Position That Stands on a Narrow Definition of War
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   As president Obama steps to the podium, the air is already thick with echoes of history. FDR's Lend Lease program showed, years before Congress had surrendered its proper role in declaring wars, that the U.S. can wage war without committing troops. More recently, Eisenhower's "military advisors" in Vietnam proved to be the edge of the wedge that got us stuck in that quagmire for most of a generation.

   H.L. Mencken might have been speaking of the ISIS threat when he observed that "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/19/us/politics/19post.html?_r=0

: re: Shiite Militias Pose Challenge for U.S. in Iraq

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 9:51 AM
Subject: re: Shiite Militias Pose Challenge for U.S. in Iraq
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

     What doesn't exercise a monopoly on the use of force cannot be a State. Iraq has failed.  It was invented in 1916 by Mark Sykes and Francois-George Picot for the convenience of the British and French empires of the day, but has never had either cohesion or logic as a nation. Like Yugoslavia, it could be held together by a repressive central regime or a while. Like Yugoslavia, it dissolved in blood when the peoples could be heard.

    It is a fool's errand to try to hold together an Iraq that the Iraqis don't want. The U.N. charter recognizes that they have a right to self-determination not as Iraqis, but as peoples. The Kurds there have taken the lead in establishing good governance. The local Shia and Sunni communities should do as well. To set the U.S. against their legitimate national aspirations would be to put us on the wrong side of history.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/17/world/middleeast/shiite-militias-pose-challenge-for-us-in-iraq.html?_r=0

Subject: re: For James Foley’s Family, U.S. Policy Offered No Hope

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 8:40 AM
Subject: re: For James Foley’s Family, U.S. Policy Offered No Hope
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   Hostage-taking with extortion is an ancient mechanism for funding brigands, pirates and terrorists. It was already enumerated as a  capital crime in Deuteronomy.  Julius Caesar was himself held for ransom in his youth.  But the paying of ransom creates the incentive to taking ever more hostages.  Most of our Western allies have gone through this analysis and have pledged not to pay ransoms, even as they go on doing it. European ransoms (mostly French) are currently al-Qaeda's biggest money stream. The world--and we as individuals--would be safer if we all kept to that pledge.

   The most cogent analysis comes from Hassan Nasrullah, head of Hezbollah. He acknowledged in 2006 that he wouldn't have snatched the two Israeli soldiers if he had known that Israel would respond with war on Lebanon.

   And Caesar? He came back with an army and killed every one of the pirates who had held him, as he promised. Pax Romana was founded on the principle that crime must not pay.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/16/us/for-hostages-family-us-policy-offered-no-hope.html?_r=0

: re: To Crush ISIS, Make a Deal With Assad

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Mon, Sep 15, 2014 at 9:51 PM
Subject: re: To Crush ISIS, Make a Deal With Assad
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

    Starting from the false dichotomy that one is either for ISIS or against it, Ahmad Samih Khalidi proceeds to the false conclusion that the U.S. would be well-served to hop into bed with Bashar al-Assad.   We have nearly as many potential allies arrayed against ISIS (including simultaneously Saudi Arabia and Iran!) as there are factions wanting al-Assad dead.  al-Assad would be the least valuable to our cause, not least because to embrace him would be to alienate more puisant allies.

   We cannot require that our political allies be mirrors of ourselves. Certainly e.g. we owe Stalin's Soviet Union a great deal for carrying the brunt of fighting in WWII. But neither to we have to embrace this particular monster.

   By self-segregating, ISIS's fighters have purified other forces in the area of exactly the elements the U.S. couldn't back. Do let's succor the Kurds and the Yazidis and the Lebanese, and Shia across the region from ISIS atrocities. But let's not embrace one monster just because he's our enemy's enemy.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/16/opinion/to-crush-isis-make-a-deal-with-assad-.html?_r=0

: re: Holder Says Private Suit Risks State Secrets

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Mon, Sep 15, 2014 at 9:19 AM
Subject: re: Holder Says Private Suit Risks State Secrets
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

    A.G. Holder's intervention is prima facia evidence that the official line--that "[United Against Nuclear Iran] is not affiliated with the government"--is a lie. Rather, it looks like a propaganda front of our own government turned on the electorate.

    From the first, the States Secrets doctrine has been used not to keep us safe, but to keep our government safe from proper public scrutiny of its embarrassing behavior. It needs to be revisited and rejected; it is not compatible with democratic governance.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/15/us/holder-says-private-suit-against-united-against-nuclear-iran-risks-state-secrets.html?_r=0

: re: U.S. Says It Told Qatar Not to Pay a Ransom

           

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 8:52 AM
Subject: re: U.S. Says It Told Qatar Not to Pay a Ransom
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   I find no comfort in government assurances "that it told the Qataris not to pay a ransom for [Peter Theo Curtis]".  It smells of the same lawyerly evasions we were fed when we bought Raymond Davis out of a Pakistani jail. Is this one likewise a CIA hit-man, masquerading as a journalist this time, rather than as a diplomat? 

   The world will be a safer place when our government and any potential kidnappers understand the lesson of "Captain Phillips".  Taking an American hostage should get you a bullet in the head, and not a bag of cash.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/26/world/middleeast/us-says-it-told-qatar-not-to-pay-a-ransom.html?_r=0

: re: Legal Authority for Fighting ISIS

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Fri, Sep 12, 2014 at 9:28 AM
Subject: re: Legal Authority for Fighting ISIS
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

    December 8, 1941 FDR appeared before Congress. Calling the attack on Pearl Harbor "a date that will live in infamy", he asked for a declaration of war. Congress duly declared war. That is the last time that the U.S. was called to war in accordance with our constitution. Since then, our Congress has shirked its role (or our Executive has usurped it) in Korea, in Vietnam, in Grenada, in Iraq, in Afghanistan...  The precedent is not Obama's to set. The system has been broken since before he was born.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/12/opinion/legal-authority-for-fighting-isis.html?_r=0

: re: Iran’s Talks With Russia May Strike at Sanctions

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Wed, Sep 10, 2014 at 10:17 AM
Subject: re: Iran’s Talks With Russia May Strike at Sanctions
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   As rival petro-states, Iran and Russia are most unnatural allies in 2014. They are united only in resentment of economic sanctions from the West.  Iran has many more interests in improving ties with Europe, and would bring much to that relationship. Locally, it would be an important ally against ISIS. Globally, it's uniquely positioned to get Europe through the Winter if there are to be real, mordant sanctions against Russia. No one else has the idle natural gas capacity to fill that breach.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/10/world/middleeast/irans-talks-with-russia-may-strike-at-sanctions.html?_r=0