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PrintStaying the course is folly in this Vietnam-like situation
Letter writer Ken Ruzich ("The Anti-War Crowd Is Emboldening Our Enemies," Nov. 20) must be so pathetically brainwashed by the conservative right-wing media that he writes that the Democrats will "lead us to another Vietnam." Excuse me? George W. Bush has already done that!
The Republicans' Iraq Group cabal rushed this nation headlong into the tragic Vietnam-like quagmire of Iraq. Attack dog Dick Cheney's patriotic machismo platitudes ring ironically hollow, addressing the situation's politics rather than its problems. "Stay the course" no longer cuts it with a public increasingly fed up with the deceitful ineptitude and corruption of the Bush administration.
In the mid-1960s an academic critic of America's Vietnam policy said, "We humans are very prone, when we make a major mistake, to begin lying to ourselves. We go on indefinitely -- until we pay the wrenching cost of the mistake, or until we muster the courage and the will to stop lying to ourselves. I am here to suggest that it is long past time to stop lying to ourselves about Vietnam." William Appleman Williams' words are profoundly meaningful today applied to Iraq.
Only when more courageous voices from both parties, following U.S. Rep. John Murtha's lead, are heard standing up for what is right will we be able to effect the necessary policy changes that will extricate us from this disaster. The wrenching costs now being paid by our heroic young troops must stop.
DON FINCH
Harrison
Face the truth
President Bush and his apologists (such as letter writer Ken Ruzich) seem to lack the courage to face the truth. How can they claim that those who simply want investigations of how we got into this war "are now trying to rewrite history"?
There is no rewriting necessary in saying that President Bush took us to war on the basis of flawed information. We know there were no weapons of mass destruction, and last Sunday's paper also had an article that indicated one of the main sources of prewar information used by the Bush administration, an Iraqi defector code-named Curveball, was not considered credible even by those who did the interrogation ("Germans Say U.S. Used Bad Iraq Data," Nov. 20)!
Mr. Bush is accusing his critics of rushing to judgment (of him) with inaccurate information. Apparently that would be OK only if done by the Bush administration. However, what the critics are asking for is only an investigation of how the decisions were made that got us into war. Someone with nothing to hide and who wants to get the history right would welcome this.
ROBERT J. REILAND
O'Hara
Why we're angry
The Nov. 20 letter "The Anti-War Crowd Is Emboldening Our Enemies" shows just how clueless some people are when it comes to the war in Iraq.
Just because you are outraged about what is going on in Iraq does not make you "anti-war" or "anti-American." I am not "anti-war," but I am against this war because the American people were lied to about why we are in Iraq. We were told that it was because of weapons of mass destruction, 9/11, al-Qaida, oppression, torture and Democracy.
Where is Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the 9/11 attack? Our president said he would be brought to justice. Why are we not stopping China and North Korea from building nuclear weapons? Why didn't we attack Saudi Arabia? After all, Osama bin Laden is a Saudi as well as 15 of the 19 hijackers. Didn't our president stand on the deck of an aircraft carrier in his pilot costume and indicate "mission accomplished"? Now this president tells us that we must "stay the course" until the mission is accomplished. The Bush administration and its supporters attacked John Kerry over his Vietnam record. Now, they are attacking John Murtha, another Vietnam veteran.
Dick Cheney recently referred to politicians who have lost their "backbone." Both Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney used the power of others to keep themselves out of Vietnam; now that is losing your backbone. It's things like these, and that the intelligence may have been manipulated to start this war, that are angering more and more Americans.
If you are so supportive of this president and his modern-day Vietnam, then why aren't you in Iraq wearing fatigues?
JOHN SCHNEPP
Reserve
Little substance
Why does the left, including the media, insist on losing the war on terrorism? Why do so many people believe what those with an agenda tell them? I'm not an expert in any field; because I'm not, I do find time to do my homework before I accept anything I hear from the left or the right as truth.
In talking with service members who are or were actually involved in Iraq and/or Afghanistan, and digging through the internet, I have learned that those doing the fighting strongly believe in what they are doing and actually see more good than bad happening in those countries. Just as important, almost to a person, they feel betrayed by the media and feel they're being used as pawns in the political infighting in Washington.
Vietnam was won on the battlefield but lost in Washington, and there is nothing preventing the same thing from happening in the war on terrorism. Unfortunately, I've found extremely little substance to what the left is saying about the war. What does come through is that the left actually fears winning this war. Those on the left need this country to lose so they can regain their power in government. It's not about the United States, it's about them.
BILL HOAGLAND
Whitehall
Sad times
The war in Iraq was foolish in its conception and is foolish in its reality. Its supporters' claims that opposition to it demoralizes the troops may well be true, but it is not unpatriotic. The tragic fact that young Americans are risking and losing their lives is not a justification for being there. The war on terrorism is everywhere, not in Iraq.
Why are we draining our military, our economy and our good name in the world with this wasteful, arrogant, misguided venture?
It is doubly tragic that the war is so draining to our already overstressed economy and that the right now feels justified (and finds it oddly convenient) to cut vital programs that perfectly satisfy its ideological agenda.
These are sad times indeed.
RICK LANDESBERG
Squirrel Hill
Bush hypocrisy
The current reports of President Bush and Vice President Cheney vigorously denying the charges that the administration misled the country to justify to Iraq war brings to mind the also unproven allegations by the Swift boat group that attacked John Kerry's military record in Vietnam during the last election.
For Mr. Bush and his supporters to cry foul over their dilemma shows a certain amount of hypocrisy. They appear to be good at dishing it out but can't take it. The old saying "what goes around, comes around" clearly applies, and George W. Bush better get used to it as the 2006 midterm election approaches. Bring it on. I can hardly wait.
MIKE HUDAK
Pleasant Hills
More waste
I just finished reading the Nov. 23 article "GOP Leaders Rap Rendell on Part D Education Funding." Why is it that we, as private citizens, must try to conserve money in our households to make ends meet, but our politicians never seem to think that's important to them?
If the Medicare prescription plan that was perpetrated upon us would have been well thought out (instead of it being rigged to make sure the drug companies maximized their profits on it) maybe we would not need to spend the money to try and explain it to normal-thinking people.
It seems that the best way to make sure the big drug companies made more millions was to completely confuse the people who need the help the most. And now, we need to spend more than $12 million to explain it to them. Go figure!
SAM MARCOCCI
Moon
Cleaning up properties is a good place for O'Connor to start
Although I live in the suburbs, it angers me to no end to see abandoned properties litter the city and become used as dens of inequity because of a lack of proper funding.
My solution to the problem: prison labor -- good old-fashioned, cheap jailhouse labor, a la "Cool Hand Luke."
I'm sure the American Civil Liberties Union would have something ridiculous to say about how deviants who can't obey society's rules have the right to stay locked up and do nothing, rather than get outside in the fresh air and be busy cleaning up -- probably after themselves in some cases. The lot-cleaner union would, I'm sure, have a say, too, about how it cuts into its deal somehow.
New mayor Bob O'Connor has a chance to show he means business when it comes to making the city a showplace. Here is a place he can start.
ANDREW RICHARDS
Oakmont
