Language

[Regarding Alan Bock's column of September 12, "The Price of Empire":]

"It's not just that most CIA analysts have never even been to the countries they are supposed to be analyzing, nor that they often don't speak the language."

The above statement from [Alan Bock's column] indicates clearly that you just do not understand the situation. When I went to college, the only people in foreign language classes were those who majored in foreign languages and the mathematicians and physicists who were frog-marched in to fill said classes. One of the dilettantes bought a German language magazine and then complained to our teacher that he could not read same. The teacher (German born) patiently explained that what we were supposedly being taught was not German, but what some other dilettante thought was German 30 or 40 years before.

If you tried to force a real US college student (not the subhuman foreign language majors, mathematicians or physicists) to take foreign language, there would be riots on campus. Do you realize that you have to actually attend foreign language classes every day? Learning foreign language is work, not education.

You are living in a dream world.

~ Yilon

Alan Bock replies:

I'll add one more category. When I was in college I had a suspicion, borne out during the balance of my life, that I would be singing in choruses doing fairly "serious" music. So I took a semester each of French, German and Italian – having taken the quintessential dead language, Latin, in high school – so I could get the basic pronunciation and a smattering of grammar. It worked for me. But then I never wanted to be a country analyst for the CIA or any government agency.

The situation you describe is hardly new. My father, who went to high school in San Diego in the late 1920s and early 1930s, used to tell us about his high school Spanish teacher bemoaning the fact that he was required to teach "high Castilian," a language no actual Spanish speaker in San Diego would be likely to understand at all, when a colloquial Mestizo-tinged version would have been infinitely more useful to people living in a border city.

But there are places other than schools and universities to teach and to learn other languages. Shucks, even the military still does a fairly decent job of it. And you might think that a somewhat less arrogant intelligence establishment could manage it.

Terror

[Regarding Justin Raimondo's column of September 11, "Terror – the Price of Hegemony,":]

These terrorists and their material and moral supporters are to be congratulated. Their actions have silenced those of us in this country who would abandon the logic of empire. The die is now cast, and empire it will be.

Americans, irrespective of their political stripes are now galvanized to support a prompt, effective, and almost certainly vicious retaliation for this act. Whatever nation sheltered and supported these animals will now learn the lesson that the Japanese learned after Pearl Harbor. People who have means to assess the pulse of the political and military inner circles inform me that a limited employment of thermonuclear weapons is not out of the question, depending on the situation.

I will mourn the escalation of the erosion of civil liberties that will inevitably follow. I will shed no tears, however, for the bastards responsible and their fans. Incinerate them and sterilize their nest.

~ Scott Miller

The "Backtalk" editor replies:

Their "nest"? If the latest news reports are to be believed, the plot may have been hatched in Massachusetts, and the terrorist/pilots trained in Florida. Suspects are believed to be Saudi nationals – that is, they're believed to be from a country that is a U.S. ally. If Osama bin Laden inspired, directed, or aided the attack, then does his "nest" include the CIA, which funded, armed and aided his 1980's fight against the Soviet Union?

[Regarding Harry Browne's guest column of September 12, "When Will We Learn?":]

Thanks for a very well stated position for all peace-loving, concerned Americans. This statement should be voiced throughout the land. I, for one, am forwarding it to all my friends and even my local newspapers.

By the way, I'm not Libertarian, I'm Green. This just goes to show how much we nonaffiliated folks can agree.

~ Mr. L. Hicks

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Moral Equivalence

I supported Antiwar.com in the past and continue to believe in your goals and am a Libertarian that voted for Browne in '96. He has completely flipped his lid as made obvious in the article posted on your website about the World Trade Center attacks. The US policy of interventionism clearly has incited these incidents, but there is no moral equivalence whatsoever between any of the bombings or attacks that we have perpetrated and this incident. There is a difference between acknowledging our own policy and moral failures which does need to happen and blaming ourselves for this evil.

Thanks again for a good site, it is good to hear something outside of the mainstream. Browne should have checked out the Libertarian Party website for a more evenhanded response to these horrific acts.

~ Paul G.

Harry Browne replies:

Perhaps you could explain for us the moral difference between the bombings of innocent people in the Sudan and the bombings of innocent people in America. I'm not "blaming ourselves." I'm blaming the politicians who "incited these incidents." If you realize the policy of interventionism has led to this, why don't you cry out to stop it? Or should we blindly "stand behind" the politicians while they do more of the same?