Letters to the Editor

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Published: Jun 4, 2008

I Remember

To answer your last question [Editor's Letter, "Bombs Over Baghdad," May 29, 2008]. I was standing in my own living room in South Philly when the real live, eerie scenes from Baghdad commenced that March morning in 2003. I was overcome just as you by the need to cry.

I cried because I was witnessing a deliberate act of naked aggression. I could not imagine my ceiling falling on my head or my family crushed by masonry. Yet our own country was inflicting such harm and damage to a people who had never once attacked us. The more I think about it, even to this day, the more revolted I become. How did we let this happen?

Doron Taussig's [Cover Story, "What Bassam Sees," Doron Taussig, May 29, 2008] piece on the memoirs and observations of Iraqi refugee and reporter Bassam Sebti is a powerful witness to the consequences of the American invasion and occupation of Iraq. It is testimony to one human being's struggle to maintain equilibrium in an upside-down world where one can love Am ericans and despise what America has done. Bassam's almost stoic acceptance of the horror that has been visited on his country is evidence of a survivor's mentality. What a struggle to balance one's need to survive with a need to avoid survivor's guilt. Bassam is more traumatized than he realizes but has made an accommodation with that trauma. Most revealing is his remembrance of the night before the invasion when he said goodbye to his city. Can anyone read that and not imagine how impossible such a task is? Can anyone reading it not want to weep?

Gloria C. Endres
South Philadelphia

I would not be surprised if George Sr. and in particular his wife Barbara do not remember where they were the day their son gave the order to bomb Iraq. On Good Morning America [March 18, 2003], Barbara said "Why should we hear about body bags, and deaths, and how many, what day it's gonna happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? Oh, I mean, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"

Perhaps where they were the day bombs fell on Baghdad may not be as relevant as a mother's mind in denial, the one who raised our actual president.

Monique Frugier
Ardmore 

Bassam is right that the media should focus more on the Iraqi refugee situation. Perhaps the right-wing media avoids the topic because it shows the negative consequences of liberating Iraq from Saddam. Perhaps the left-wing media avoids the topic because it implies that there is a need for a U.S. presence to prevent civil war.

Gamaliel Isaac
Highland Park, N.J.

I resent Doron Taussig's assertion that the "cross" of the Iraqi quagmire "is not Bush's alone to bear. This is America's war." I'm extricating myself from the alleged "three-quarters of the country" who purportedly supported Bush/Cheney Co.'s oil lust.

That minor gripe aside, Bassam Sebti's story was long overdue in an American media that has been bought and paid for by extreme right-wing conservatives. The American people are slowly waking up to the fact that this quagmire was sold based on outright lies and needs to come to an end. They need to be made uncomfortable with accounts such as Bassam Sebti's to bring home the fact that (imagine this) the people of Iraq are human beings who have been deeply affected by this war.

Donna Di Giacomo
Germantown

David Faris [Slant, "To the Last Drop," May 22, 2008] is correct. For years, our elected-officials and ruling class have deceived the American consumer into thinking that the OPEC nations have an infinite supply of petroleum for us affluent, well-developed Americans to use. Our nation is now looking for a supplier who will meet our gluttony. We are like crackheads scurrying through a drug-infested neighborhood, looking for a supplier to ease the pain of our addiction. What is needed now is for the American populace to demand of its government an aggressive program comparable to the Manhattan Project to develop an alternative source of energy that will allow us to maintain our standard of living and produce cheaper and more efficient energy to power our industry.

Andre E. Williams
Philadelphia

In lamenting the effects of inflation, David Faris failed to establish that the Federal Reserve, a private banking cartel, is the culprit. He should seek to understand whose interests it is to expand the money supply and how, when new dollars are created, with no financial backing whatsoever, they compete with the existing money supply, principally to the detriment of the poor and middle class. Were he to do so, he might understand the business cycle as well as understand that the price of oil and other basic commodities has been relatively stable when measured in currencies that are not similarly under attack by their central banks.

It is time to eliminate the Fed and give it no further opportunities to destroy the U.S. dollar and Americans' standard of living. One Great Depression and many recessions is enough.

Bill Faust
Philadelphia

From Your Lips to God's Ears, Liz

I LOVED the story about the crew cleaning up West Philly [News, "One Stone?" May 22, 2008]. I LOVE the City Paper, and would like to see it rise in prominence. Here's to fewer bimbo celebs in bikinis in newspapers and more stories like that one.

Liz Otwell
Wayne

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