Return Fire
William Kristol praises the president for defending his administration in "Bush Fights Back" (Nov. 21), but it is too little, too late. The president and his advisers clearly failed to learn an important lesson of the Vietnam war, namely, that if the government gets involved in a hot war overseas, it must also wage a propaganda soft war at home against the anti-American left wing. Going back to just before the start of the Iraq war, one can compose a list of each assault in a series of propaganda attacks on the president, the administration, and the war effort. Each assault in the series lasted four to six weeks, and as soon as one theme lost traction it was replaced by another. By leaving all these attacks unanswered, the president is now suffering from their thousand cuts.
Samuel Alunni
Newton, Mass.
Ditto
In his illuminating "Where Are the Pentagon Papers?" (Nov. 21), Stephen F. Hayes describes his arduous yet failed attempts to obtain information that may help explain why it was important to attack Iraq. We learn that the Defense Intelligence Agency is studying thousands of captured Iraqi papers and filing them in a database called HARMONY. But after months of repeated freedom-of-information requests to the Pentagon, Army Intelligence, and DIA for a few unclassified documents in this database, Hayes found himself thoroughly (and illegally) stonewalled.
Hayes sees this stonewalling as a lost chance to let the press help vindicate the administration's rationale for war. In reality, it seems more likely to be just another example of the breathtaking incompetence of this administration. With the war effort collapsing on all sides, it seems that even answering a simple database request is beyond their ability. With a sort of "reverse Midas touch," almost any effort the Bush administration touches fails.
Carl Mezoff
Stamford, Conn.
Whoa, Man! Be Fair . . .
I very much would like to agree with Heather Mac Donald's premise in "God and (Wo)man at Yale" (Oct. 17); however, I question her logic. She cites an example at Yale, where a photo on the cover of the alumni magazine featured chaplains of varying faiths and color, but no females. Feminists on campus were outraged, as they took this as a sign of female exclusion and patriarchy, Mac Donald says. Yet to what sources does she refer? Two female graduates, out of a school of over 5,000 students!
There are thousands of Christian fundamentalists whose views could be seen as similarly outrageous and irrational. Yet we do not discount the entire Christian faith on this premise. This, however, is what Mac Donald attempts to do regarding feminism. One does not cut down the whole tree simply because one of the branches is diseased. Similarly, Mac Donald should give more thought to the feminist movement as a whole, and the core beliefs upon which it is built, rather than to the views of two confused women.
Stephen Crispini
Mahwah,N.J.
Whipping the Post
It is curious that you chose Edward T. Folliard for the byline to your Nov. 21 Parody of the Washington Post ("Card, Rove Out; Gergen New Chief"). By an odd coincidence, the same night I read the Parody, I was also reading Whittaker Chambers's Witness, and there on page 710 was "Edward T. Folliard of the Washington Post, the most implacable of the pro-Hiss newspapers."
Oh, and of course the other article in the Parody was credited to Janet Cooke, the notorious Post reporter who fabricated a story about a fictitious eight-year-old heroin addict in 1980. Thanks for the memories!
Roger Clegg
Sterling, Va.