Be very afraid…

One of the scariest things about the USA is the people who (get elected to) run it. People who have political control over massive armies and nuclear arsenals, enormous economic clout and the capacity for huge geopolitical interference… and yet manage to pull stunts like this:

Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Penn.) seems like he hasn’t checked in on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process in a while:
“With the global war against terrorism, it is now incumbent on Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Yasir Arafat to clamp down on Palestinian extremists that have perpetuated violence and to restart a peace process that has collapsed,” wrote Pitts in a recent, rather outdated response letter to a constituent.
Arafat has been dead for eight years and Sharon has been in a coma for six. Sadly, “dead” and “comatose” are two adjectives people might use to describe the peace process itself.

That’s the story as reported on Mother Jones. The original (longer and uncited) write-up came from a Mondoweiss correspondent, whose father was the recipient of the letter in question.