Better Questions Than Answers

Across the world in Iraq Americans die every day. Our generals and the White House are at odds over the war’s conduct, most Americans now disapprove of the President’s handling of it and many of us have long felt his administration has been out of touch with the reality of its human cost. And whether from within our own hearts we applaud or view with concern the actions of Silver Star Mom Cindy Sheehan, encamped outside the President’s Texas ranch, one thing’s clear about this mother’s attempt to make actual human contact with the president on the subject of why her son and almost 2,000 others are now dead. What she’s done has already accomplished what nothing else has effectively been able to do: focus America on the cost of the war and the reasons it goes on. In accomplishing that – and she has — she’s already won her struggle, regardless of the president’s personal response to her or his continued lack of one.
Ms. Sheehan’s message on the war is simple and she says it in one sentence: “The majority of Americans think this war is based on lies and deceptions and they think it was a mistake and they want the troops to come home.” It’s the kind of clarity one hardly ever gets from, say, elected officials. But the substance of her message, especially given current public opinion, is hard to dispute. And the facts about the war’s origin - revealed in the Downing Street Memos from British intelligence – say she’s right.
Ms Sheehan’s critics, some of the war’s most unabashed and unblinking proponents, have indeed treated her and her stated intentions rather viciously. Nonetheless she’s been clear and well spoken on her motivation, saying “we believe we’re honoring our children by working for peace.” We honor that sentiment, and hope that those who question it may in time come to see things differently.
It’s unfortunate that the president’s response to Ms. Sheehan has become a major national embarrassment. Most ranch owners would have hopped in their pickup and put the media story to rest with a quick 4-wheel drive and a few minutes of private discussion. The White House has barely taken issue with her characterization that he treated their meeting last year as if it were a party. What she wants, like most of us, is actual dialogue, better answers, and accountability. Improbable as it seems she’ll get the first, her attempt at it may well precipitate -ultimately anyway - both those answers and an accountability that’s long overdue for everyone. We certainly hope so.

Closer to home, we unfortunately feel it’s necessary to comment briefly on ongoing events out at Shandaken town hall. Given the seriousness of the break-in charge Supervisor Cross has recently made and that town police are now investigating it, we’d hoped to withhold comment entirely until the investigation’s results are made known. Things are indeed still confusing. We’ve all heard or read of at least three different stories as to how and by whose hand a printed copy of a 3-year old private email came to be “discovered” in a file in town hall and made public by developer Dean Gitter at July’s town board meeting. None of the three versions corroborate the others, nor does any of them appear to make intuitive sense.
There is one piece of evidence however – the actual piece of paper on which the email was printed – that could identify who printed it out, and presumably answer the question whether it was really “found” in town hall as claimed or was electronically stolen years ago and subsequently placed there in an attempt to discredit political opponents of those who seem to have found it.
That evidence it seems, that one piece of paper, is now suddenly gone, vanished in a burglary, just days after the town officials received a FOIL request which would have compelled them to show the document to its author. At this point we think the term suspicious barely captures the timing and circumstances of the disappeared evidence, and hopefully a successful investigation will shed further light on who’s responsible for what’s happened to it. But so far the conduct of that investigation seems to be raising yet more questions, beginning with why Shandaken’s police department will not answer calls on the matter from this or any other Ulster County newspaper while it does provide information to one based across the Hudson River in Columbia County.
And the whole matter of course does raise other questions that are hard for people in Shandaken not to ask themselves: Why does every major controversy in town seem to revolve around the town’s major developer, and why do all the current controversies involve those in power accusing those not, in situations where the issue at hand -- iminent domain -- was rendered moot by a mutual agreement arrived at via straightforward negotiations lauded by both the former supervisor, Pete DiModica, and Mr. Gitter.
We urge people, at least until more is known, to withhold judgement and not jump to conclusions. In time, things do come out.