January 31, 2005

Note: Please read Dave Zirin’s article on the Counterpunch site ( http://www.counterpunch.org/zirin01312005.html ). After doing so, I encourage you to write an email to the
New Republic: letters@tnr.com

Editors of the New Republic,

I am writing this email in response to an article I read this evening on the Counterpunch web site, where articles I write are occasionally posted. In an article by Dave Zirin, appearing on January 31, 2005, I read with dismay about Tom Frank who, in an article ("Left Out") published on the New Republic web site, threatened the lives of at least two writers and political commentators, viz. Stan Goff, a former Delta Forces soldier and current organizer for Military Families Speak Out, and internationally renowned writer and speaker, Arundhati Roy.

I attempted to read Frank’s article, but since I am not a New Republic subscriber, or do I intend to subscribe, I was only able to read the first paragraph. In short, I am basing my response to Frank’s reportedly outrageous remarks on Mr. Zirin’s article appearing on the Counterpunch site.

Apparently, while participating in an antiwar panel sponsored by the International Socialist Organization, the Washington Peace Center, the DC Anti-War Network and other groups, Mr. Frank was "so riled up," as Zirin characterizes it, that he "unloaded a deranged harangue about the suffering he would like to rain upon people daring to organize against this war," in particular Goff and Roy.

"What I needed was a Republican like Arnold [Schwarzenegger] who would walk up to [Goff] and punch him in the face," Frank wrote in a subsequent article, published, apparently without reservation, on your web site. As for Roy, a Booker Prize winning author, Frank wrote, "Maybe sometimes you just want to be on the side of whoever is more likely to take a bunker buster to Arundhati Roy."

If I am to believe Zirin’s article, Frank believes people expressing their constitutional right to free speech and assembly should not only be arrested by John Ashcroft, "busting through the wall with a submachine gun," but also sent on a "trip to Gitmo, with Charles Graner on hand for interrogation." Graner, of course, is the U.S. Army reservist court-martialed for engaging in abusive behavior at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, including assault, indecency, adultery, and obstruction of justice. Does Frank sincerely believe Goff, Roy, and other opponents to the invasion and occupation of Iraq should be tortured and sexually humiliated by convicted criminals, or is he simply attempting to be funny? If the latter, both Frank and the editors of New Republic have a warped and pathologically perverse sense of humor. However, considering other "conservatives," such as Ann Coulter, routinely engage in this sort of sick "humor," I am not surprised. In fact, considering Rush Limbaugh, a revered icon of many so-called "conservatives," also engages in mean-spirited and even vicious "humor" directed against liberals and anti-war activists, I would have to conclude sadism is a frightening characteristic of more than a few Bush supporters, the vast majority who seem to find nothing wrong with invading sovereign nations, destroying civilian infrastructure and hospitals, and killing more than 100,000 Iraqis predicated on the well-documented lies and fabrications of neoconservatives and George W. Bush.

Finally, Mr. Frank’s remarks bring to mind Hitler’s Sturmabteilung, or brownshirts, paramilitary goons who not only talked about using physical violence against their opponents but engaged in it with frighteningly sadistic and, eventually, genocidal results. Is it possible the writers and editors of the New Republic wish to emulate the actions of the Nazis, responsible for the murder of millions of innocent people?

Obviously, I have exceeded the limit in this email for letters submitted to the New Republic, so I do not expect you to publish this criticism of Tom Frank’s libelous screed, rubbish apparently passing for journalism at the New Republic. However, if Frank’s piece is indicative of the mindset of people who disagree with those of us who oppose the invasion and occupation of Iraq, I would say it is a sad day in America. In fact, not only sad but possibly dangerous.

Sincerely,

Kurt Nimmo