'Self-righteous pique'
In apparent self-righteous pique, Michelle Shelfer (Saturday Soapbox, July 16) positions herself via name-calling, mockery and superior knowledge. Then, she makes the point that for me to question whether the use of psychiatrists to guide Guantanamo interrogators is Nazi-like disrespected "the agony of [the] victims" of the Holocaust.

Ms. Shelfer misses the point.

By resorting to an ideology of genocide justified by labeling Jews and others as an evil outside force, an anti-race "toxic" to Aryan purity, German physicians abandoned the command of the Hippocratic Oath and adopted an insane premise that justified the militarization of medicine and consequent medicalization of killing. In their warped vision, they were "healing" their country.

The scale between Germany and Guantanamo is incomparable because the former executed millions and the latter has not done so. But such difference in result is the end, not the beginning, of the process of genocide.

Honest-thinking people must admit that the general human moral and psychological potential for mobilizing evil on a vast scale and channeling it into systematic killing exists. Such people must acknowledge, too, the universal human proclivity toward constructing good motives while participating in bad behavior.

Ms. Shelfer is adamant about how I lack "courtesy" and "respect" for my "community." She says that my questioning our government's policies make her "feel poisoned." Indeed, she writes that my "inflammatory language" shows I do not "care about our troops" and "contribute to a climate that leads to more death."

Perhaps, if enough people were to agree that a "political ranter" should be jailed as a criminal, they would sanction that the proper and more "humane" solution would be to eliminate his "toxic taint" with maximum expedience.

It is precisely the ease with which we human beings can make mistakes when we size up scary realities that caused our forefathers to recognize that the path of safety lies in the opportunity to freely discuss our grievances and to propose remedies; and that the fitting remedy for evil counsels is good ones.

If Michelle Shelfer believes what I counsel on my sign is evil, her remedy is to merely avert her eyes and go on her way. To scapegoat me, or any one, is a type of mischief that betrays the Constitutional stuff I believe Americans are made of.

Ford Greene, San Anselmo

TAM VALLEY