Letters

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SOAP OPERA

Manohla Dargis is one of the many religious devotees to the Tolkien trilogy, judging by the way she gushed over this first installment (“Worlds of Wonder,” Dec. 21). Lord of the Ringsis a crashing bore, like watching a three-hour Irish Spring soap commercial with special effects and unconvincing actors. Its sense of boredom never flags. Dargis writes of this movie's “genuine desire to thrill, an unabashed Hollywood throwback and a return to still another paradise lost.” Give me a break—or give me back the two hours and 58 minutes I lost!

Bob Tucker Westminster

CRUNCHING PEOPLE AND NUMBERS

I was disturbed by Jim Washburn's column on the war in Afghanistan (“New War, Old Protest,” Dec. 14). He mentioned the Red Cross warehouse that was bombed near Kabul in a U.S. air raid but failed to mention that it was bombed because the Taliban government had chased off the Red Cross employees and was in the process of taking the food in the warehouse to feed its soldiers. Also, your estimates of Afghan civilian casualties are higher than I've heard or read anywhere else. How sure are you about your estimates?

Michael Herald
via e-mail

Jim Washburn responds: In one week in late October, U.S. pilots twice bombed the Red Cross warehouses in Kabul. Both times, Pentagon spokesmen blamed human error. After the second one, I'd have blamed the Taliban—which is exactly what Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld tried when he said, “We did not start the war. The terrorists started it. So let there be no doubt: responsibility for every single casualty in this war . . . rests at the feet of Taliban and al-Qaida.” That doesn't explain two stray bombings in a week, but it shifts blame nicely. Regarding casualty figures, I've relied on the foreign press—infinitely more accurate than the U.S.—and, more recently, on the accounting of University of New Hampshire economics professor Marc W. Herold. Studying foreign and domestic news and government sources, Herold concluded that more than 3,767 noncombatant Afghans had died by Dec. 6. Some of the most vicious fighting came after that date, of course. Counting Afghan dead “has not been a priority” in the U.S., Herold told theHartford Courant. “It, regrettably, lamentably, is something which just has not been seriously addressed. There are occasional reports on page 26 or page 34 of theNew York Times or theLA Times, where a particular place [in Afghanistan] will be described or spoken about. In Europe or in Pakistan, this has been on page 1 or [pages] 2 or 3 for months. That's why I put this together—because it is news over there and it hasn't been here.”

Re: “New War, Old Protest”: I can appreciate the notion that two wrongs don't make a right—the U.S. killing innocent Afghan civilians won't correct what's been done here. But in a situation like this, how would you have us get rid of the huge terrorist network that's responsible for Sept. 11 and other acts? Negotiations and demands weren't working, and, left in place, Bin Laden and his thugs would shortly have committed more terrorist acts. The fact that we're partially responsible for Afghanistan turning into a terrorists' nest aside, isn't this a case where some wrong had to be done now to stop a whole lot more wrong from being done later?

Mike Burawski
via e-mail

Jim Washburn responds again: If our CIA had been doing what it's supposed to do—protect us—we'd have never come to this point. But following Sept. 11, the U.S. had at least two options: to treat the attack as we would any law-enforcement problem, or treat it as an international military matter and bomb the Jesus out of everyone who got between us and the relatively small number of terrorists operating in Afghanistan. We chose the latter, and we're doing a whole lot more wrong right now that's likely to make more people hate us. If our goal was to create endless enemies, we've chosen the right path.

OUR PAL EISNER

Aw, come on, guys: you didn't even bare your teeth in the Dec. 14 Disneyland piece (Nick Schou's “Mouse Chow”). You must be scared to death. All you could come up with about Michael Eisner was “Disney CEO Michael Eisner earned $72 million in 2000.” And nary a picture of Mr. Eisner? Just make believe his name was Garofalo; then you'da come up with at least one ugly nasty pic of the guy and done a whole page on what a disgusting pig he is. I mean, Mr. Eisner is the guy who a couple of years back raised the admission to Disneyland so a poor jerk with a few kids had to pay about $20 more to get into the park, while Mr. Eisner went home with his bloated paycheck each week. Here's a guy who hired a good friend a while back, then had to let him go with millions of dollars in severance pay after a short stint with Disney. Wasn't it the same issue in which you did a real hatchet job on the visionary Mr. Disney—who created the park in the first place (Matt Coker's A Clockwork Orange)? Maybe you can make it up by doing a real article on the Disney pollution and how Mr. Eisner and company turned Mickey Mouse into Mickey Moskowitz.

Prof. Marcus
via e-mail

THANKS FOR THE MAMMARIES

I read Anthony Pignataro's article about boob jobs and found it very funny (“Holiday Mammaries,” Dec. 14). But he forgot to address one thing: many of the men who bought boob jobs for girlfriends or wives are not with those women anymore. I conducted an informal survey and found that 95 percent of all women who had boob jobs subsequently left their boyfriends or husbands.

I must say that I love nice boobs. It's just a shame that the guy who pays for them rarely gets to keep them.

Nevill Ooms
via e-mail