Correspondence
Correspondence CONGRESS AVOIDS ITS JOB IN TWO RECENT EDITIONS OF THE WEEKLY STANDARD, Robert Kagan and William Kristol have argued for a nonpartisan committee to investigate what happened in the...
...STEVEN CHERNUS Pittsburgh,PA THE LAW is not an "ass...
...Bellesiles was fast and loose with his facts, and that bothered me greatly...
...This is where it belongs...
...Just exactly whom would Kagan and Kristol appoint to their commission...
...Their silence was inexcusable...
...DIANE OTTLINGER Folsom, CA...
...And while everyone is interested in finger-pointing, we cannot forget former president Bill Clinton...
...PAUL L. TURNER Glen Burnie, MD THE LAW IS A MORASS WAS THE FBI REALLY CONSTRAINED by lawyers and judges and procedural issues before September 11 as David Tell claims in "The Law Is a Ass" (June 10...
...He had written an opinionated fantasy that was being passed off as history...
...They could stretch out the investigation as long as they wish without any meaningful information being made public...
...Yet nary a peep was heard in the American media regarding the first Canadian wartime fatalities since the Korean War...
...A thought that has occurred to me since the deaths of four members of the Canadian military in April is that there was a disparity between the American media coverage of this event and of an earlier event involving Canadians that was less significant in any important context...
...Brooks's example is of course Ray Kroc's infatuation with the french fry...
...Chetwynd inspired me to sit down and write a letter of condolence to the Consul General of Canada here in Atlanta...
...Police departments are punished for using common sense techniques like racial profiling, one of the very best tools to catch criminals and terrorists...
...Tell's editorial might have been more accurately titled "The Law Is a Morass...
...I disagree...
...The owner of the flight school in Florida where Atta trained says he also contacted the FBI...
...Constitution puts oversight in the hands of Congress...
...The phenomenon described in Paul Shaughnessy's "Passionate Uncertainty: Inside the American Jesuits" (June 3) was thus quite familiar to me...
...This is particularly true when it comes to issues relating to national security...
...BILL BROCKMAN Atlanta, GA IN SEARCH OF A GOOD FRY I CLIPPED David Brooks's Casual "The Fryers Club" (May 27), not because it brings to mind the vagaries of good and bad french fries but because it states so eloquently and with such wonderfully ironic humor the sad truth that "the key to success in this world is having the ability to focus an entire lifetime's worth of fevered zealotry on one trivial thing, product line, or concept...
...At least with Congress we have a better chance of safeguarding the information that may be detrimental to our war effort...
...If Brooks can pen such penetrating insights about such seemingly trivial objects, what other priceless nuggets lurk in the pages of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...If we do not have the faith in our elected representatives to do the oversight, then we are electing the wrong people to Congress...
...People have political opinions, and their opinions will guide them to their findings...
...The U.S...
...During the Salt Lake City Olympics earlier this year, many Canadians could be forgiven in thinking that the Americans regarded the actions of figure-skating judges who under-scored skaters Jamie Sale and David Pelletier as a grave insult to Canada and something that should be rectified immediately...
...that makes civil liberties for potential terrorists a distant second...
...Any accountability that would be present with a congressional committee would be absent with an appointed one...
...I wish Americans would take time to thank all of the countries that stand with us against terrorism...
...Don't forget, it's not just the Minneapolis and Phoenix memos...
...AS A CANADIAN, I disagree with Lionel Chetwynd's belief that United Nations peacekeeping duties are necessarily humiliating, but on his other points in "Dulce et Decorum Est" (June 3), he is right on the money...
...But on the other hand, Senator Patrick Leahy has been accused of leaking secrets...
...As long as the Jesuits remain ashamed of their Catholicism, I will remain ashamed of the Jesuits...
...I'm glad there are those out there who can find their fry and make it the alpha and omega of their existence, if for no other reason than that they give birth to the creative genius of such writers as David Brooks...
...ARNOLD KRABBENHOFT Tremonton, UT PRIZE-WINNING FICTION A TOAST TO DAVID SKINNER for keeping the Michael Bellesiles incident alive with "The Cowards of Academe" (June 10...
...ANDREW NORRIS Canada I APPRECIATE Lionel Chetwynd's "Dulce et Decorum Est," about the four Canadian soldiers tragically killed in April by "friendly fire...
...I would have had more respect for him if he had just sat down and written a 200-page treatise against the Second Amendment...
...This has been accomplished by converting the firm ground of the Constitution as written into the slippery bog in which we now find ourselves mired...
...The school's official motto is "Strong Truths Well Lived," but its unofficial motto has become, "Sssshhh . . . Don't Tell Anyone We're Catholic Or We'll Lose All Our Money...
...The law cannot pass a law...
...Most commissions are filled with retired political hacks planning to supplement their political retirement with the consulting fees we pay them...
...Bush is just one more in a long line of not-so-conservatives who play the politically correct game that could result in the deaths of thousands of Americans, not just those in the World Trade Center and Pentagon massacres...
...Since I read the article, the words "Find Your Fry...
...When one of the prospects checked in for a flight, put a visibly armed marshal on the plane...
...We elect our congressional representatives to be partisan in running the government...
...Though my college allows a pro-life group to meet on campus, no one seems to feel any pangs of guilt about inviting pro-choice speakers to address the student body...
...Come on...
...have echoed a thousand times in my mind...
...We should never forget that Michael Bellesiles's book belongs in the fiction section...
...With oversight at least both sides of the issue—especially since the House is Republican and the Senate Democratic— would be forthcoming...
...Follow Your Fry...
...In one sense, you have to love America...
...From that point on, the outcome would have been up to the marshals and the terrorists—but the FBI would have been off the hook...
...It would be a challenge to find enough individuals who would be unbiased and diligent in their duty to this "blue-ribbon commission...
...Will the American experiment extinguish itself for want of a societal survival instinct born of the sense that it is indeed worth saving...
...It seems Skinner caught Bellesiles supporters by surprise, judging by the uncoordinated—even rude—responses he got from them...
...Crafting policies that root Islamic terrorists out of the United States and keep them out should be our leaders' number-one priority...
...It is too busy engineering society and redistributing wealth—two powers that are not enumerated—to attend to more essential functions...
...PHIL MILLER Annandale, VA THE REAL STORY appears between the lines of "The Law Is a Ass": The federal government has failed miserably in its first Constitutional duties...
...All they had to do was make a list of hijacking "prospects": Islamic aliens who had been trained to fly commercial jets...
...Partisanship is part of politics...
...Had this simple system been installed before September 11, most or all of the planes that crashed would have had marshals aboard...
...Vice President Dick Cheney is concerned about safeguarding our secrets for national security...
...Correspondence CONGRESS AVOIDS ITS JOB IN TWO RECENT EDITIONS OF THE WEEKLY STANDARD, Robert Kagan and William Kristol have argued for a nonpartisan committee to investigate what happened in the intelligence community and to see if pre-September 11 information was bungled ("Time for an Investigation," May 27 and "Still Time for an Investigation," June 10...
...If he had gone to the New York Times or the Washington Post, or THE WEEKLY STANDARD for that matter— don't you think something more would have been done...
...The more people are privy to sensitive information the greater the chance of a leak...
...DON RORSCHACH Irving, TX IN ADDITION to the bureaucratic protocol at federal agencies that may or may not have led to September 11, I believe liberal policies and a politically correct mentality are in many ways equally as threatening to our way of life...
...CHUCK GALLUP Seattle, WA O CANADA...
...I like and admire the Canadian military tremendously...
...Each time, I smile...
...As an Air National Guardsman, I had the pleasure of spending two weeks at a Canadian Air Force Base in August of last year...
...I fear that we have not yet suffered a sufficient blow to bring a similar notion to the consciousness of our decadent culture...
...You guys have been in Washington too long...
...Maybe I am naive in believing that they are answerable to us and should therefore do the job for which they were elected...
...I remember the storm Arming America stirred when it hit the shelves two years ago, complete with unwavering praise from liberal intellectual circles...
...Both parties in America have been passing laws for over thirty years that weaken the ability of anyone to protect Americans...
...Kagan and Kristol claim that Congress is too partisan to make an adequate determination and uncover anything meaningful...
...RICHARD BROWNELL Brooklyn, NY SHAMEFUL SECRETS I GRADUATED FROM A JESUIT COLLEGE in Maryland that seems to be wholeheartedly ashamed of its Catholicism...
...When a sports team performs poorly, it goes "back to basics...
...He should be...
...His lenient foreign policy and his behavior in general combined to ensure the terrorists that America was ripe for an attack...
...These are the people we elected to serve us...
...I cannot help but wonder if a death wish permeates the ongoing debates regarding ethnic profiling and the cushy treatment of the prisoners at Guantanamo...
...President George W. Bush even railed at the airlines when his Arab Secret Service agent was pulled off an airliner immediately after September 11...
...Set up a system with airline security, and have sky marshals standing by at major airports...
...Perhaps we are about to witness the ultimate victory of modern liberalism: the destruction of America and its history...
Vol. 7 • June 2002 • No. 40
