letter to the editor

i wrote a letter to the new york times this morning. i used to do it more often. i ride my train into philly each morning reading the paper. by the time i get to center city, usually something is annoying me. that thing rattles around in my brain as i walk the three blocks from the train station to my office. during the course of the three blocks sometimes my annoyance congeals into something coherent which i dash off by email once i get to my desk. most of the time, the letter disappears into the ether after i write it, never to be heard from again. but it makes me feel better and so i can forget about whatever pissed me off and get to my work.

on five occasions they have published my letter. but they only seem to publish one out of every 15 or so that i write. you do the math. i do this a lot. but not as much since i got this blog. i guess it's just a new place for me to vent which is cutting into my nyt letter racket.

anyway, for whatever reason this morning i emailed a letter to the times rather than simply blogging about it. they never contacted me about publication all day, so i guess that it will not get in. actually, now that i'm rereading it, i can see why. the times likes letter best when they have one simple point, preferably short easily articulated points. in my letter i think i was trying to say too much. or maybe it just sucks.

anyway, here it is:

To the Editor:

In his column "Iraq War III" William Safire both claims that the recent attacks against American forces in Iraq is a different war than the war to topple Saddam Hussein's government last spring and characterizes those attacks as "terrorism." As the Times' language expert I really expected better from Mr. Safire. On the first point, Safire claims that the current attacks are by Saddam loyalists. In other words, the perpetrators are the same enemy in the war last spring. If that same enemy is still fighting six months later, how can it be called a new war? Instead it looks like the "prior war" never ended after all. And as for his characterization of the attacks as "terrorism," terrorism is acts of violence against civilians to accomplish military or political aims. Downing a military helicopter filled with soldiers during a war is not terrorism, it is guerrilla warfare.