Saturday, March 17, 2007

Letter: Ed Koch's Dual Loyalty regarding war with Iran

I was delighted to see that the New York Press, a free Upper West Side weekly, published my letter below reacting to a column by former New York City mayor, Ed Koch, attacking Iran.

I was all the more pleased because I figured they tossed my letter into the circular file when it hadn’t appeared the week earlier. About a year ago The New York Press changed editors, fired all their left oriented writers, replacing them with right wingers – as part of a national effort, apparently, by wealthy conservatives and corporations to remove left of center commentary from the print media.

Great, I thought, just what the Upper West Side needs, another right wing organ. But then lo and behold, Amy Goodman’s column appeared some weeks ago, and the paper has recently seemed somewhat more left friendly. Perhaps they realized that advertisers would no longer support a paper that West Siders no longer bothered to pick up.

It was also good to see confirmation of my previous notion that the New York Press makes the effort to print virtually all the coherent letters they receive.

Ronald
http://desip.igc.org
***

February 28, 2007

To the New York Press



To the Editor:

Once again, Ed Koch displays his unabashed dual loyalty. Dual loyalty is actually a misnomer: the name suggests equal loyalty to two countries, one’s own and a foreign country. But Koch’s loyalty to Israel is much stronger than it is to the US if his latest column arguing for the hardest possible line against Iran is a fair indicator. ("Iran at War With US," 2.28.07)


Does Ed Koch think that a war against Iran would be in the US interest? Most people understand that widening the already catastrophic Iraq war would be terrible for the US even if it only imperiled already tight and expensive world oil supplies. By supporting President Bush’s reckless, pitiless militarism, Koch shows that fealty to Israel’s goal of destroying another Muslim country is more important than the effects on his fellow Americans.

Sincerely,

Ronald Bleier

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Do you think the papers got rid of their left leaning writers because the conservative owners got tired of giving some time to people who might have been giving them grief?

The Oregonian, my town's piece of cacca, hires pseudo and quasi liberals to represent the other side. These liberals are apparently right off the boat. I've never heard of them before. And they take weak peripheral issue with the more prevalent conservative views put forward.

As for the letters, when they are short, two sentence jabs, they are unable to express very much nuance. Yeah, you're against the war, or you oppose Bush...,'nough said. So, it would seem no great victory to get such a letter printed.