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Letters to the editor August 20, 2004 | Page 12 OTHER LETTERS BELOW: The horror of a rotten system Dear Socialist Worker, "Carol blames the system," commented the reporter. Carol Hetherwick, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, talked in the interview of how she had made many phone calls, but couldn't receive any help for Brennan--her 5-year-old grandson with bipolar disorder, whom she and her husband Bryan had adopted. Bryan also suffered from mental illness and depression, which worsened after he lost his insurance job and was without health insurance. Looking for work, they moved to Monroe, Wash. On August 5, Bryan shot the boy, and then himself, in front of the police station. Carol had a note from Bryan filled with hopelessness and worry about her and the boy's future. As I turned the channel, there was news that the unemployment rate dipped to 5.5 percent, which wasn't "significant." I feel that Socialist Worker really does give us the truth about the system. I don't feel that the mainstream media is asking the questions it needs to about the lack of jobs. Spreading the Iraqi resistance Dear Socialist Worker, This is the face of the U.S. military defeat that some in command are whispering about, but the top generals and the politicians around Bush refuse to admit. Generals always are obsessed with fighting the last war. After Vietnam, they thought danger to U.S. imperial dominance came from peasant-based insurgencies led by nationalist intellectuals. Wrong. Today the world is dominated by huge cities, concentrating the working classes of various nations and shifting the balance of power to them. It's no accident that the Iraqi resistance is centered in the big cities. As Iraq veteran Mike Hoffman points out, there's nothing command can do now but launch suicidal patrols to try to impress the U.S. media with "shows of force," and send the bodies back to Dover. "The future of warfare," the journal of the Army War College declared years ago, "lies in the streets, sewers, high-rise buildings, and sprawl of houses that form the broken cities of the world." To help develop a geopolitical framework for urban war-fighting, military planners turned in the 1990s to the Rand Corporation. "Insurgents are following their followers into the cities," Rand warns, "setting up 'liberated zones' in urban shantytowns. Neither U.S. doctrine, nor training, nor equipment is designed for urban counterinsurgency." As a result, the cities have become the weakest link in the American empire. The Generals paid no attention. "Rapid urbanization in developing countries," wrote Captain Troy Thomas in the Aerospace Power Journal spring 2002 issue, "results in a battlespace environment that is decreasingly knowable since it is increasingly unplanned." There is no Mission Accomplished. Operation Iraqi Freedom is Operation Iraqi Disaster. Every dead or maimed soldier is nothing but another casualty in the hell of an un-winnable war, sacrificed to cover the ass of politicians at home who are terrified that admitting defeat means losing their power and prestige. That's not a reason to keep fighting. That's a reason to start organizing against this war in the one place that can stop it cold: the U.S. armed forces in Iraq. Dear Socialist Worker, But Nader disappeared between that campaign and this one, squandering all the energy, hope and momentum of the movement that backed him in 2000--a movement that he and others could have built for the real alternative we all want. Instead, he remained silent during the horrific past four years, and when he finally did start talking, he was avowedly trying to appeal to disgruntled conservatives, the Reform Party, and the Democrats--not us. I don't know what Nader's motivation is, and I don't care. All I know is that I can't vote for Bush or Kerry, and I won't vote for "a vaguer Nader" in 2004. Will the International Socialist Organization now promote an electoralism only of the unelectable, organizing every four years to back the least of three evils? I hope and believe not. Palestinians' fight for justice Dear Socialist Worker, I agree that it is crucial for Palestinians to come together to discuss how to build an independent, grassroots movement, however deliberately weakening the bodies, even in protest, of the very people that can lead that movement is a waste. Palestinians can not fight against the U.S.-funded Israeli occupation alone. They are under extreme military repression and poverty and have no social power in Israeli society. That is why the Palestinians need the support of the Arab working class and other Arab activists in the Middle East. Within the Arab world there is discontent with the brutal dual occupations of Iraq and Palestine, the oppressive regimes of their own rulers and their complicity with the U.S. and Israel. For example, Al-Jazeera reported that Egypt is supplying the cement used in building the apartheid wall. A few months ago, riots broke out in Lebanon against rising fuel prices brought about because of the implementation of neoliberal policies. The potential for mass struggle is there. I think it is important to create links between Palestinian activists and other Arab activists as a way to create new organizations in Palestine and the Middle East to fight for real justice. The poverty that statistics ignore Dear Socialist Worker, That means that hundreds of thousands of people across the state live in a position of permanent financial instability as they struggle to keep up with the most basic expenses. This was a local study, but Rhode Island is certainly not unique. If anything, this report is overly optimistic, since it is based upon some obviously flawed figures. For instance, it allots just $768 for housing a month, which is well below what a family would have to pay in rent in almost any Rhode Island city. Also, the study's use of a family of four as "standard" is clearly a myth. While it admits that families dependent upon a single income have an even harder time making ends meet, the study leaves out families larger than four. These mistakes and omissions mean that if the study had been more detailed, it would have found that even more than 47 percent of the state's families do not make enough to keep up. In comparison, the 2003 poverty threshold according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services was not the $50,000 found by Rhode Island College, but instead an absurd $18,400 for a family of four. This figure is completely out of touch with reality. It should be no surprise, though, that our government is clueless about the needs of working families. Bush and Kerry may disagree narrowly about which way the economy is headed, but neither see anything wrong with touting economic "plans" that just mean increased tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. Rarely does information about the real state of the economy make it into the mainstream press. This is why SW's weekly coverage of otherwise unreported labor struggles and economic matters is indispensable for anyone fighting for a just society.
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