To the Durango Herald:
Your editorial of Friday, Dec. 28, is surely one of the most curious published by the Herald in recent memory. To begin with, the Trumpian tantrum headline ("We're Out of There") surely calls to mind Charles Lindbergh's pro-Nazi isolationism just before World War II.
Unless you are attempting to co-opt those of us who marched against the Vietnam War in the 1960s; perish the thought.
Next, your somewhat selective survey of Middle East history (Should we really bother at this juncture about King Abdulaziz in the 1940s?
Or the CIA's covert intervention against Muhammad Mosadegh in 1953?) declines to address the most disturbing facets of Trump's impulsive isolationism: How exactly do we, or our long-time Kurdish allies, benefit from consigning the Kurds to the tender mercies of the Turkish Islamist strongman Erdowan?
And how do we, or the oppressed Syrian people, benefit from leaving them in the bear-hug of a ruthless Russian dictator, one that is still busy subverting our own Democracy?
Or in the murderous clutches of their own president-for-life, Bashar al-Assad?
Or in the suffocating embrace of his spiritual sponsors, the Tehran Ayatollahs?
Or in the lethal care of their murderous Hizbollah proxies in Lebanon?
Likewise, do we really benefit from alienating, at the same breath, both our homicidal bosom-buddy Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and our sole faithful ally in the Middle East, Israel?
Or, can an impulsive foreign-policy-by-Twitter, with scant input from either our remaining military experts or our dazed Democratic allies, really be effective?
One wonders if you actually read the Brett Stephens column you published the following day.
To those of us who remember the magnificent tenure of Morley Ballantine, longtime publisher, editor and guiding spirit of the Durango Herald, your editorial is not only a mystery, but also an insult to our - barely intact - intelligence.
Tom Givón
Ignacio
