Stars & Stripes letter: America: empire or republic?

[lebkuchen]

America: empire or republic?

A friend of mine claims that Americans don’t come from that big place called “America,” but from a planet he calls Zog. I told him he was crazy. And yet, sometimes I wonder. Take, for example, the fact that some Americans are talking about “taking back America.” But surely, to “retake” something, you first have to know what you have lost.

The letters page of Stars and Stripes is full of writers screaming at fellow Americans they call “liberals.” My friend claims that this is impossible: He has information from an informant from Zog itself that the last real liberal died in 1949.

He claims that Zog is actually being controlled by creatures called Neoconis from another planet. These Neoconis have taken control of the capital, they are supported by the Zogian media (nothing more than seamless propaganda), a naïve electorate, both political parties, the corporate conglomerates, which include the “military industrial complex,” and a strange-looking creature called Bill O’Reilly...

Here's another one, on immigration:

‘Lazy’ enough to thrive in U.S.

I am very pleased that the Stars and Stripes did not succumb to “liberal” demands that it drop Ann Coulter’s very enlightening opinion pieces. It was especially instructive to read Coulter’s informed piece on the cultural onslaught caused by immigrants from Latin America (“U.S. culture is best. So why let it be devalued?” June 4).

You see, I am one of those Hispanic immigrants from one of those “Latin American-style banana republic(s)” who immigrated to the United States at age 17. A year later, this “luckless” immigrant joined the armed forces of his newly adopted country. After becoming a naturalized “traitor” citizen, I received my commission in the U.S. Air Force and went on to serve my country meritoriously for a total of 20 years.

A “lazy” Hispanic belonging to one of those groups with “the highest high school dropout rate,” I studied and worked extremely hard and received undergraduate and graduate degrees with high honors from American universities. Upon retirement from the Air Force, this “incompetent” Hispanic completed a second distinguished career with a major U.S. defense/aerospace company. And, yes, Coulter will be pleased to know that I have “adopted” the English language. But, I also still speak Spanish and Dutch fluently and I am proficient in German and French...

and this:

Liberals just want to be heard

Regarding the May 30 letter “Liberals wish to silence others”: Again we are reminded by a narrow-minded conservative that liberals are lower than pond scum and don’t deserve to speak out on touchy subjects such as the present administration’s bluff and blunder.

The problem is the letter writer and his ilk have gotten us entrenched in a war nobody wants or needs and in which we cannot prevail. Our poor soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen are suffering because of the president’s ineptness in dealing with the facts: 1) there weren’t weapons of mass destruction and 2) Saddam Hussein had better control of Iraq than we do and should have been left alone but closely monitored — a cheaper and more effective means of control than the billions of dollars we have squandered so far in the Middle East...

http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=125&article=46508