Kerry the Hawk
IN HIS EDITORIAL “The Antiwar Candidate” (Aug. 16/Aug. 23), William Kristol argues that a John Kerry administration would not implement a forward-looking military strategy. Kristol cites Kerry’s Democratic convention speech as evidence. Yet, as with all things Kerry, his discussion of foreign policy at the convention was fraught with ambiguities.
Kerry said he would use military force “only” when the American people or “fundamental American values” faced a threat that was real and imminent. I do not know what a real and imminent threat to “fundamental American values” looks like. Does this include humanitarian crises? Fundamental American values are threatened in many parts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America on a daily basis. So if Kerry intended his statement to be some kind of limiting principle governing the use of force, he is far more of a hawk than your editorial suggests.
Frank J. Russo
Richmond, VA
Secondhand News
IN HIS ARTICLE “Bad Headlines for Bush . . .” (Aug. 16/Aug. 23), Irwin M. Stelzer demonstrates why the economy is perceived as doing poorly when it is actually doing well. He accepts and repeats–without questioning or qualifying–the July report that the “economy created surprisingly few jobs–a mere 32,000.” The Kerry campaign trumpeted this as bad news, as did the media. But is it really bad news, or simply biased reporting and misleading analysis?
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) produces two different job counts each month. One is the Establishment Survey that, as the name suggests, is computed by asking employers on the BLS list how many people they have working for them and how many they have hired or laid off. The problem with this survey of non-farm payrolls is that it doesn’t account for new businesses, independent contractors, or the self-employed (except perhaps on a lagging basis). In the short term, it almost completely ignores the entrepreneurial sector of the economy–the sector that creates the most jobs. The other survey, the Household Survey, actually calls people up and asks them (1) if they have a job; (2) how many people in their household are working; and (3) how many have been hired or fired.
The Establishment Survey shows that just 401,000 net new jobs have been created since the recession ended in November 2001, an average of roughly 12,500 per month. But the Household Survey counts more than 3.2 million new net jobs created over that same period, including an astounding 629,000 in July.
The fact is that the jobless rate fell to 5.5 percent in July, the same rate that Bill Clinton hailed as a sign of prosperity in 1996. If the economy is doing poorly and job growth is sluggish, how is it that we have had nearly three straight years of economic expansion at an average 3 percent growth rate?
Daniel John Sobieski
Chicago, IL
Embedded Bureaucrats
REUEL MARC GERECHT made two particularly salient points in his critique of the 9/11 Commission report (“Not Worth a Blue Ribbon,” Aug. 16/Aug. 23). First, the commission did not adequately address how U.S. intelligence services could better develop local assets capable of penetrating terrorist cells. Second, its recommended solution to our intelligence gathering woes was further centralization of the process.
The American people deserved more from the 9/11 Commission than an unimaginative call to expand our groupthink-prone intelligence bureaucracy.
Al Winston
Naples, FL
What the HAL?
VICTORINO MATUS MAY BE CORRECT in fearing the rapid advance of technology, but he misstates both the facts and the message of 2001: A Space Odyssey (CASUAL, Aug. 16/Aug. 23). Contrary to Matus’s assertion, HAL does not kill all the astronauts. The “Dave” character, in fact, outsmarts HAL by braving the vacuum of space without a helmet to reenter the spacecraft and disable HAL.
Furthermore, a message of the movie is that technology–whether a pig’s thighbone or HAL–isn’t inherently good or bad, but can be corrupted by the uses to which humans put it. HAL goes psychotic, while his duplicate on Earth does not, because HAL has been instructed to lie to Dave and his colleague about the true purpose of the mission.
Cary William Clew
Hacienda Heights, CA
The Fog of War
AS OUR SHAKESPEARE-LITERATE readers have pointed out, Fluellen’s “Kill the poys and the luggage? ‘Tis expressly against the law of arms,” cited in last week’s editorial (“Kerry’s Band of Brothers,” August 30), refers to the French “war crime” at Agincourt, not the English.
