: re:Hillary Clinton Looks Past Primaries, and to Republicans, in Strategy to Beat Sanders

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Wed, Nov 25, 2015 at 6:17 AM
Subject: re:Hillary Clinton Looks Past Primaries, and to Republicans, in Strategy to Beat Sanders
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

    This paper is mistaken to report that "[senator Clinton]  has locked in the support of  over half the Democratic Party’s superdelegates, party leaders and elected officials, needed to secure the nomination".  Super delegates are also known as "unpledged delegates" for a reason; they are unpledged, responsible to the party and not to a candidate. Like any thinking person, each can change her or his mind as new information becomes available.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/24/us/politics/hillary-clinton-looks-past-primaries-in-strategy-to-defeat-bernie-sanders.html

: re: John Kerry Adds Voice to Those Urging Bigger Push Against Islamic State in Syria

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Tue, Nov 24, 2015 at 9:18 AM
Subject: re: John Kerry Adds Voice to Those Urging Bigger Push Against Islamic State in Syria
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

     If the U.S. is to have a role in the defeat of ISIS and not just charge into another quagmire, we need allies fighting for their own mission and ours, not just proxies in it for the swag. That means giving up the Sykes-Picot map of 1916 and endorsing the legitimate national aspirations of the peoples of the region as ambassador John Bolton sketches. Then, finally, our military will be in service to the policy president Obama called for, looking forward, and not backwards.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/24/world/middleeast/john-kerry-adds-voice-to-those-urging-bigger-push-against-islamic-state-in-syria.html

: re: Mrs. Clinton’s Syria Strategy

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Fri, Nov 20, 2015 at 8:50 AM
Subject: re: Mrs. Clinton’s Syria Strategy
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   Secretary Clinton has indeed "given voters and the other candidates in both parties much to think about and debate".  What exactly would a "no-fly zone" in Syria mean? ISIS has no military aircraft. But Russia has fighters stationed there. Does she really propose to shoot down Russian pilots? Or would she draw a red line but not enforce it?  

   Military experience is not a pre-requisite to the role of commander-in-chief.  But sobriety should be.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/20/opinion/mrs-clintons-syria-strategy.html?_r=0

: re: Europe’s Welcome Sign to Terrorists

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Thu, Nov 19, 2015 at 8:19 AM
Subject: re: Europe’s Welcome Sign to Terrorists
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:
   Predictably, a head of InterPol seizes the Paris attacks as an opportunity to argue for increased police power. He is, however, disingenuous in citing the U.S.'s example. Where there are checks on U.S. internal borders, they are agricultural controls. Most Americans don't even hold passports. The borders the Schengen group need to control are the perimeter to the outside world.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/19/opinion/europes-welcome-sign-to-terrorists.html?_r=0

: re: Cabs, Camels or ISIS

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Wed, Nov 18, 2015 at 8:48 AM
Subject: re: Cabs, Camels or ISIS
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   Thomas L. Friedman talks out of both sides of his  mouth. We join with him in praying that education, enlightenment and a creeping scientific world view will in time leave no room for ISIS or groups like it. We cannot, however join him in embracing Mohammed el-Sisi. el-Sisi is just the latest military strongman whom America has supported against his own democratically-elected government, this time in Egypt. As long as we are seen as standing with el-Sisi (who has gunned down political demonstrators in the streets) we are encouraging recruitment to those very terrorist groups that mr. Friedman claims to oppose.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/18/opinion/cabs-camels-or-isis.html

: re: In Suspects’ Brussels Neighborhood, a History of Petty Crimes and Missed Chances

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Tue, Nov 17, 2015 at 8:15 AM
Subject: re: In Suspects’ Brussels Neighborhood, a History of Petty Crimes and Missed Chances
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

  Tellingly, Belgian police already had an eye on Ibrahim Abdeslam, not for his religion (he seemed only an indifferent Muslim) but for his criminal activity before he blew himself up in Paris.  France, like any nation, must take care to reject criminals at the borders.  Instituting religious tests for travelers and immigrants might buy some votes among bigots, but it would not make France--or the U.S.--safer.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/17/world/europe/in-suspects-brussels-neighborhood-a-history-of-petty-crimes-and-missed-chances.html?_r=0

: re: The Virtue of Contradicting Ourselves

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Sun, Nov 15, 2015 at 9:06 AM
Subject: re: The Virtue of Contradicting Ourselves
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

    Anyone who is honest and intellectually engaged must sometimes change her/his mind as new information becomes available. This poses a problem for any republic. The American form of government requires that I vote for someone in this cycle whom I will trust to act as I would want on future issues as yet unforeseen. The only guide by which I can choose such a leader is his/her past action.  To vote for a candidate with a record of position reversals is to embrace a personality, but not a platform or a program; it reduces politics to a popularity contest.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/15/opinion/sunday/the-virtue-of-contradicting-ourselves.html

how-the-us-and-israel-can-move-forwar

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Sat, Nov 7, 2015 at 11:43 PM
Subject: re:
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

  President Obama would be wrong to "throw[n] in the towel on a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians" exactly as PM Yitzhak Rabin was wrong to link Land and Peace. "Land-for-Peace" worked between Israel and Egypt because both parties were States, each competent to enforce the terms of the agreement on its own people. To contract peace with a non-state entity would be nonsense; it cannot enforce the agreed terms.
   So let president Obama recognize Palestine (and Kurdistan!) as president Truman recognized Israel. The right to self-determination belongs to Palestinians and to Kurds no less than to e.g. Jews. Only then can two States agree to a peace that mean anything, exactly because it  can be enforced by each party, on its own people.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/07/opinion/how-the-us-and-israel-can-move-forward.html?_r=0

: re: 20 Years After Rabin, Israeli Politics Have Shifted

From: barry levine
Date: Wed, Nov 4, 2015 at 2:47 PM
Subject: re: 20 Years After Rabin, Israeli Politics Have Shifted
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

     With twenty years hindsight, neither of the polar views that dominated Israeli discourse at the time of Rabin's murder make sense. On one hand, Greater Israel from the Jordan to the Sea would establish a nonsensical "Jewish State" in which Jews were a minority. On the other hand, "Land for Peace"--which worked with Egypt--in the West Bank would require that a non-State entity enforce the terms of a peace on its people. That's also nonsense. The power that can enforce such terms is called a "State".

     The status quo is unsustainable and indefensible. As Yishayahu Liebowitz laid out in 1967, "the Occupation must be ended not because that will bring peace, but because it is immoral." Only then can two States negotiate a peace that each can enforce on its own people.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/04/world/middleeast/20-years-after-rabin-israeli-politics-have-shifted.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0

: re: New U.S.-Backed Alliance to Counter ISIS in Syria Falters

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Tue, Nov 3, 2015 at 1:52 PM
Subject: re: New U.S.-Backed Alliance to Counter ISIS in Syria Falters
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   It is perhaps fitting that " the Syrian Democratic Forces...[which] exists in name only" should serve a country that exists in name only. Syria's borders were drawn in 1916 by Mark Sykes and Francois George PIcot without regard to ethnic or cultural cohesion, before the Ottoman Empire was even defeated. Since then, it has been held together by repressive governments, only to fly apart like Yugoslavia when the fist relaxed. The U.S. would do better to work for UN charter's guarantee of a people's self-determination than to futilely tape up the territory of a paper state whose own residents don't acknowledge.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/03/world/middleeast/new-us-backed-alliance-in-syria-exists-in-name-only.html?ref=world