Compare The New York Times letter with the original.
Re “President Gerald R. Ford, Who Led U.S. Out of Watergate Era, Dies at 93” (obituary, Dec. 28): You write: “He had sought to bind up the nation’s wounds as much by instinct as by design. One of his earliest acts, combining courage with forgiveness, was to announce before a convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars that he favored leniency for Vietnam-era draft resisters.”
With Mr. Ford’s amnesty program, only a paltry 21,800 men out of 350,000 who were eligible were granted clemency. The program ignored the plight of military deserters, who were generally less educated and usually came from less well-off backgrounds than draft resisters.
This must be weighed against the full pardon he granted Mr. Nixon.
Howard Lisnoff
Dec. 28, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/29/opinion/l29ford.html
December 27, 2006
To the Editor:
In “Gerald Ford, 38th President, Dies at 93” (December 27), your writer states, “He had sought to bind up the nation’s wounds as much by instinct as by design. One of his earliest acts, combining courage with forgiveness, was to announce before a convention of Veterans of Foreign Wars that he favored leniency for Vietnam-era draft resisters.”
Mr. Ford’s amnesty program, as it was eventually applied, forced war resisters to swear an oath of allegiance. Only a paltry 21,800 men out of 350,000 who were eligible under the program signed on. The program completely ignored the plight of military deserters, who were generally less educated and usually came from less well-off economic backgrounds than did draft resisters.
All of this must be weighed against the full and free pardon he granted Mr. Nixon who had committed high crimes while in office, including his involvement in the cover up of the Watergate break-in.
Sincerely,
Howard Lisnoff
Friday, December 29, 2006
Sunday, December 24, 2006
Warwick, July 1969
Warwick, July 1969
Mike stood up on the seat of his Triumph, a screaming and powerfully built machine, on Main Avenue in Warwick. Letting go of his handlebars, he looked like a 60’s Winged Victory. Free, unencumbered by norms of accepted behavior, we rode together on Sundays, living in the moment.
Friday, December 22, 2006
Motorcycle Reprise
Motorcycle Reprise
Midday, the open road, heading south and east down from the Berkshires past small Massachusetts and Connecticut towns each with their own indelible provincial mark, the postcard panorama of the Taconics and Catskills over my shoulder, a brilliant memory in verdant green and towering cloud shadows driven effortlessly by the heat of summer on a southerly wind. Down toward the coastal plane of New England, the wheels of my machine gliding against the wind on the snaking blacktop, the thump of the cylinders and the tuning of the pipes fitting in with the chorus of memories of youth when innocence and the mountains and the sea and a road south in summer were all that mattered and all that was.
Monday, December 18, 2006
Grandma Rose and The Life of Silence
Grandma Rose and The Life of Silence
Grandma Rose led an unremarkable life,
Silent like a cloistered nun or Buddhist monk,
Sitting hidden on a wooden crate behind
The glass display case of women’s handkerchiefs,
White hair pulled up in a bun above a round expressionless face.
“A size to fit,” she uttered when rousing for a customer,
An indication that Russian peasants weren’t as exacting
As many other immigrants in the Promised Land beside gilded streets.
What was it that you saw old woman?
The shock of your husband lowered
From his basement perch,
Suicide of high blood sugar
Or depression, that most American of maladies?
Why wouldn’t you speak or show emotion?
Were you considering some esoteric personal philosophy?
Or had you happened on the meaninglessness of it all,
The certain void to follow or the wizened ways
Of some all-knowing ancient deity?
Grandma Rose led an unremarkable life,
Silent like a cloistered nun or Buddhist monk,
Sitting hidden on a wooden crate behind
The glass display case of women’s handkerchiefs,
White hair pulled up in a bun above a round expressionless face.
“A size to fit,” she uttered when rousing for a customer,
An indication that Russian peasants weren’t as exacting
As many other immigrants in the Promised Land beside gilded streets.
What was it that you saw old woman?
The shock of your husband lowered
From his basement perch,
Suicide of high blood sugar
Or depression, that most American of maladies?
Why wouldn’t you speak or show emotion?
Were you considering some esoteric personal philosophy?
Or had you happened on the meaninglessness of it all,
The certain void to follow or the wizened ways
Of some all-knowing ancient deity?
Jimmy Carter, Israel, Lebanon and Palestine
Jimmy Carter, Israel, Lebanon and Palestine
I decided to publish this piece on the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Territories after Jimmy Carter’s book, Peace Not Apartheid, recently was published. Many of the same criticisms of former President Carter are reminiscent of the attacks that any critic receives in regard to Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians of both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The drumbeat of attacks, that Carter foresaw, is very similar to attacks against American Jews and others who criticize Israeli policies vis-à-vis the Palestinians. Jimmy Carter got it right when he argued, in public appearances about the book, that an honest and open discussion of Israeli policy is possible anywhere in the world save the U.S. Parts of the American-Jewish lobby transform any criticism of Israel into a cynical discussion of anti-Semitism, which is ludicrous, since those same arguments are heard around the world and in Israel itself. The following article was slated for publication in the Rhode Island Jewish Voice and Herald, but ultimatley was not published. That article's focus was on this past summer's war between Israel and Lebanon. The article was a commentary about an article that appeared in the Jewish Voice and Herald by Yehuda Lev.
Yehuda Lev makes many cogent observations about the current war in Israel and Lebanon, but only touches the surface of a most significant issue when he states, “Even in Israel the racist National Union Party and the settler successors to the neo-fascist Meir Kahane, are ecstatic over what they see as vindication of their sectarian, expansionist ideology”(“The blood-dimmed tide is loosed,” July 21). Perhaps Mr. Lev is onto something very significant.
Much of what has passed for support of and pride among Jews since the founding of Israel in 1948 has devolved into plain and simple cynicism against anyone in the U.S. who dares to criticize Israel. One of the first victims of the endless wars in the Middle East was not only truth, but also denigrating the “enemy” into something less than human and therefore not deserving the protections of international law guaranteed by the Geneva Conventions, the charter of the United Nations, and what has come to be known as the “just war” thesis developed by religionists over the past thousand years. Once a protection against the worst excesses of war, a “just war” is a now a complete fiction, however, given the lethality and technological sophistication of contemporary weaponry. Modern weapons are blind to civilians (among them countless children) whose mangled bodies these deadly devices routinely destroy without distinction, making a mockery of the most significant protection of noncombatants contained in the Geneva Conventions.
Besides being deadened to the endless cycle of an eye-for-an-eye that passes for foreign policy in the Middle East, most recently between Hezbollah and Israel, even a casual observer must realize how the dehumanization of Palestinians into less than equal beings has evolved. Such was the case of the transformation of Vietnamese into “gooks” during the Vietnam War; "Japs" during World War II; and "diaper heads" in Afghanistan. Such dehumanization soon expands to anyone residing in a particular country without distinction. The Nazis began their deadly march toward the Holocaust by first claiming that Jews were less than human using the bogus claims of eugenics to back up their insanity! How long after that slander did European Jews become the objects of the hate and terror of the Third Reich?
In countless conversations I’ve been part of, Palestinians have been immediately cast in similar hateful terms. Next comes the casting of Hamas as master terrorists bent on the destruction of Israel. It seems to me that Hamas was not only elected in a free vote in the Palestinian Territories, but that their radicalism is a reflection of the failed policies of both past Israeli and Palestinian political entities. Hamas could be engaged across a table through diplomacy, even if we reject much of their propaganda, but diplomacy is not the chosen means of negotiations of the Bush and Olmert administrations. In regard to Hezbollah and this past summer's war in Lebanon, much of the same analysis of failed policies can be cited for the unconscionable hostilities and their impact on both Israelis and Lebanese civilians!
Mr. Lev asks, “Who is profiting from this war?” He responds that Hamas and Hezbollah are the “big winners.” I think that the United States has also “profited” from this war, and in particular the bellicose Bush administration, whose only method in dealing with the complexities of world events is the use of the most lethal kind of force, and the support of that force through ample sales of arms. Diplomacy is unknown to the players in this administration, and truth their first casualty. Israel’s security has not increased in any measurable way since its alliance with the messianic fundamentalists of the Bush administration. No high level negotiations regarding the Middle East have taken place since the Bush administration came to power in 2001.
Israel’s attack against Lebanon and Hezbollah makes a mockery of the idea of proportionality in retaliating against Hezbollah’s attacks! It flies in the face of a rational approach to the self-defense of Israel.
The issue of what constitutes a Palestinian state has also fanned the flames of viciousness on the part of all parties for decades. Palestinians have the same right to a state as Israel, and to treatment that regards them as human beings with full human rights. The founding of Israel in 1948, and the expulsion of the vast majority of its Palestinian population, and decades of military and religious discrimination have created much of acidic hatred that fans the cycle of violence that has sapped all parties of their humanity. Israel has consistently treated Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip as less than human. Israel has refused to remove many settlements from the West Bank and has retaliated again and again with the disproportionate use of military force against their adversaries. How could anyone sane imagine anything other than intense unreasoned hatred arising from such a situation?
The great loser in this war will be Israel which has long since lost its historical memory of just how a whole population can be demonized by denying them the most basic regard for their humanity. With the great toll of civilian deaths in Israel and in Lebanon from this past summer’s war, both Israel and Lebanon become victims to the endless cycle of violence.
Attacking the humanity of Israel’s critics has become a cliché. Denying reality has become a significant part of that history. Rather than attacking Jewish critics of Israel as “self-hating Jews,” and others as being anti-Semitic, an emphasis needs to be made regarding the complexities of the Middle East that reinforces the high morality of Jewish culture and the consideration of all people of that region as worthy of decent and humane treatment. Diplomacy needs to replace militarism!
I decided to publish this piece on the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Territories after Jimmy Carter’s book, Peace Not Apartheid, recently was published. Many of the same criticisms of former President Carter are reminiscent of the attacks that any critic receives in regard to Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians of both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The drumbeat of attacks, that Carter foresaw, is very similar to attacks against American Jews and others who criticize Israeli policies vis-à-vis the Palestinians. Jimmy Carter got it right when he argued, in public appearances about the book, that an honest and open discussion of Israeli policy is possible anywhere in the world save the U.S. Parts of the American-Jewish lobby transform any criticism of Israel into a cynical discussion of anti-Semitism, which is ludicrous, since those same arguments are heard around the world and in Israel itself. The following article was slated for publication in the Rhode Island Jewish Voice and Herald, but ultimatley was not published. That article's focus was on this past summer's war between Israel and Lebanon. The article was a commentary about an article that appeared in the Jewish Voice and Herald by Yehuda Lev.
Yehuda Lev makes many cogent observations about the current war in Israel and Lebanon, but only touches the surface of a most significant issue when he states, “Even in Israel the racist National Union Party and the settler successors to the neo-fascist Meir Kahane, are ecstatic over what they see as vindication of their sectarian, expansionist ideology”(“The blood-dimmed tide is loosed,” July 21). Perhaps Mr. Lev is onto something very significant.
Much of what has passed for support of and pride among Jews since the founding of Israel in 1948 has devolved into plain and simple cynicism against anyone in the U.S. who dares to criticize Israel. One of the first victims of the endless wars in the Middle East was not only truth, but also denigrating the “enemy” into something less than human and therefore not deserving the protections of international law guaranteed by the Geneva Conventions, the charter of the United Nations, and what has come to be known as the “just war” thesis developed by religionists over the past thousand years. Once a protection against the worst excesses of war, a “just war” is a now a complete fiction, however, given the lethality and technological sophistication of contemporary weaponry. Modern weapons are blind to civilians (among them countless children) whose mangled bodies these deadly devices routinely destroy without distinction, making a mockery of the most significant protection of noncombatants contained in the Geneva Conventions.
Besides being deadened to the endless cycle of an eye-for-an-eye that passes for foreign policy in the Middle East, most recently between Hezbollah and Israel, even a casual observer must realize how the dehumanization of Palestinians into less than equal beings has evolved. Such was the case of the transformation of Vietnamese into “gooks” during the Vietnam War; "Japs" during World War II; and "diaper heads" in Afghanistan. Such dehumanization soon expands to anyone residing in a particular country without distinction. The Nazis began their deadly march toward the Holocaust by first claiming that Jews were less than human using the bogus claims of eugenics to back up their insanity! How long after that slander did European Jews become the objects of the hate and terror of the Third Reich?
In countless conversations I’ve been part of, Palestinians have been immediately cast in similar hateful terms. Next comes the casting of Hamas as master terrorists bent on the destruction of Israel. It seems to me that Hamas was not only elected in a free vote in the Palestinian Territories, but that their radicalism is a reflection of the failed policies of both past Israeli and Palestinian political entities. Hamas could be engaged across a table through diplomacy, even if we reject much of their propaganda, but diplomacy is not the chosen means of negotiations of the Bush and Olmert administrations. In regard to Hezbollah and this past summer's war in Lebanon, much of the same analysis of failed policies can be cited for the unconscionable hostilities and their impact on both Israelis and Lebanese civilians!
Mr. Lev asks, “Who is profiting from this war?” He responds that Hamas and Hezbollah are the “big winners.” I think that the United States has also “profited” from this war, and in particular the bellicose Bush administration, whose only method in dealing with the complexities of world events is the use of the most lethal kind of force, and the support of that force through ample sales of arms. Diplomacy is unknown to the players in this administration, and truth their first casualty. Israel’s security has not increased in any measurable way since its alliance with the messianic fundamentalists of the Bush administration. No high level negotiations regarding the Middle East have taken place since the Bush administration came to power in 2001.
Israel’s attack against Lebanon and Hezbollah makes a mockery of the idea of proportionality in retaliating against Hezbollah’s attacks! It flies in the face of a rational approach to the self-defense of Israel.
The issue of what constitutes a Palestinian state has also fanned the flames of viciousness on the part of all parties for decades. Palestinians have the same right to a state as Israel, and to treatment that regards them as human beings with full human rights. The founding of Israel in 1948, and the expulsion of the vast majority of its Palestinian population, and decades of military and religious discrimination have created much of acidic hatred that fans the cycle of violence that has sapped all parties of their humanity. Israel has consistently treated Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip as less than human. Israel has refused to remove many settlements from the West Bank and has retaliated again and again with the disproportionate use of military force against their adversaries. How could anyone sane imagine anything other than intense unreasoned hatred arising from such a situation?
The great loser in this war will be Israel which has long since lost its historical memory of just how a whole population can be demonized by denying them the most basic regard for their humanity. With the great toll of civilian deaths in Israel and in Lebanon from this past summer’s war, both Israel and Lebanon become victims to the endless cycle of violence.
Attacking the humanity of Israel’s critics has become a cliché. Denying reality has become a significant part of that history. Rather than attacking Jewish critics of Israel as “self-hating Jews,” and others as being anti-Semitic, an emphasis needs to be made regarding the complexities of the Middle East that reinforces the high morality of Jewish culture and the consideration of all people of that region as worthy of decent and humane treatment. Diplomacy needs to replace militarism!
Saturday, December 16, 2006
Elmwood Cemetery
Elmwood Cemetery/Saint Peter’s Cemetery, Great Barrington, MA, August 2005
Moved beyond grief among the cemetery lanes—amid the arching great maples…the cathedral spires of hemlock…thyme hesitating an instant before transforming purple to gray…masses of billowing August cumulus-waiting to betray the heavens…the constant chorus of crickets and cicadas, as if pleading with the season…the nearly imperceptible flecks of red in the surrounding hills—by the simple granite of a child’s grave.
Moved beyond grief among the cemetery lanes—amid the arching great maples…the cathedral spires of hemlock…thyme hesitating an instant before transforming purple to gray…masses of billowing August cumulus-waiting to betray the heavens…the constant chorus of crickets and cicadas, as if pleading with the season…the nearly imperceptible flecks of red in the surrounding hills—by the simple granite of a child’s grave.
Thursday, December 14, 2006
He Doesn't Get It!
He Doesn’t Get It!
Instead of taking action to end our dreadful war in Iraq the President has decided to put off until January 2007 any substantive response to the bipartisan commission's (Iraq Study Group) recommendations for ending that conflict President Bush is completely out of touch with the reality of the war. Rather than setting a timetable for withdrawal and immediately demanding that the government of Iraq take over the responsibility for its own defense, the President is entertaining recommendations to actually increase the number of U.S. forces in Iraq!
Nothing seems to make an impact on this President. Current opinion polls give the President a twenty-one percent approval rating regarding his conduct of the war. Nearly three thousand American lives, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, a $400 billion cost so far (at a rate of $10 million per hour), and an election that was a direct rejection on his conduct of the war don’t seem to matter one iota!
Nothing seems to make an impact on this President. Current opinion polls give the President a twenty-one percent approval rating regarding his conduct of the war. Nearly three thousand American lives, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, a $400 billion cost so far (at a rate of $10 million per hour), and an election that was a direct rejection on his conduct of the war don’t seem to matter one iota!
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