The airport should provide spaces for smokers

Let's "clear the air": Smokers are being discriminated against.

Although I have been a nonsmoker for almost one year, I cannot help but side with the smokers on the argument of whether Pittsburgh International Airport was correct to ban the use of tobacco in its facility.

I found the editorial "Smoke-Free Landing: The Pittsburgh Airport Is Right to Ban Tobacco Use" (Nov. 15) to be extremely prejudiced, narrow-minded and un-American. The writer seemed overjoyed that the ban will eliminate smoking from the facility and with the negative effect it would have on smokers.

It is true that smoking is bad for people's health and that secondhand smoke is dangerous, but isn't this America? Don't we, as citizens, have the right to smoke if we choose to do so? It is not the responsibility of the government to dictate what is healthy for us in the way we live our daily lives. That being said, it is unfair to subject nonsmokers to smoke.

I propose a compromise that would make smokers not feel like second-class citizens and keep nonsmokers' lungs clean and healthy. There should be separate but identical bars in the airport that cater to people who want to smoke or closed-off smoking lounges so that people who do not want to be subjected to the cigarette smoke would not have to deal with it.

I think it's a compromise that even the writer of the editorial could agree with.

JEFF MANGONE
Plum

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Believe in this threat

Regarding the Nov. 19 editorial "Next in Iraq: At Least Congress Doesn't Intend to Stay the Course": Your latest criticism of President Bush, that he is "skeptical of suggestions that call for greater involvement by Syria and Iran in the [peace] process" in Iraq, demonstrates the muddle-headed thinking that has placed Western civilization in its greatest peril since the 1930s.

Syria and Iran are sworn supporters of Islamic Jihad and enemies of the United States and the West. Engaging their "support" or "involvement" would be akin to our asking Japan and Italy to help us negotiate "peace" with Germany in World War II.

If only our pundits and politicians had the clarity of Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister of Israel. In a recent interview with talk show host Glenn Beck, Mr. Netanyahu quoted a Holocaust survivor, who, when asked what his main lesson from the Holocaust was, replied: "If someone says he is going to exterminate you, believe him."

We had a leader in Pennsylvania with this level of clear-headedness on the threat we face, but we turned him out of office two weeks ago, in part, according to some voters, because he spent too much time at Terri Schiavo's bedside.

Let's hope Bob Casey will help return the Democratic Party to the days when it was led by statesmen like Truman and Kennedy.

DOMINIC D. SALVATORI
Whitehall

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PG is mistaken

Let us count the mistakes in your Nov. 15 editorial "Appalling 'Mistake': The U.S. Must Condemn Attacks on Civilians."

You report no Israeli deaths from the Kassam missiles fired daily from Gaza into Israel. However, one Israeli woman was killed and a second man lost his legs from Kassams launched on the day your editorial appeared.

You blame Israel for the deaths of a family on a Gaza beachfront. Yet an international investigation suggested that buried ordnance was responsible, most likely mines planted by Hamas.

Still, the worst mistake is to fail to make the distinction between civilian deaths accidentally caused in pursuit of a military enemy and deliberate targeting of civilians. Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah, the Abu Rish brigades, the Popular Resistance Committees, PFLP and the alphabet soup of Palestinian terror groups all target civilians explicitly as part of a genocidal war against Israel.

If you would like to see how this works firsthand, I suggest you go to Gaza. However, I understand these groups are not very friendly to Americans these days, since they are now calling for attacks on American civilians as well.

STEVEN M. ALBERT
Shadyside

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They invite reprisals

The situation in the Levant is god-awful, yet surely calling U.S. policy "pathetic" because it calls for restraint by both the Israelis and Palestinians after an Israeli shelling accident is silly ("Appalling 'Mistake,' " Nov. 15 editorial).

The quixotic indiscriminate daily Kassam attacks by Palestinian militants, which claimed a few more victims this past week, will not enable the Palestinians to achieve their goal of annihilating Israel. But since no sovereign nation, including Israel, can afford to ignore daily attacks and periodic cross-border raids, the Kassams invite reprisals. Shellings are reprisals.

You insist that Israel should be held responsible for civilian shelling deaths and condemned because the Palestinian civilians are suffering disproportionately. I believe George Patton's quote about letting the other SOB die for his country cuts to the chase. Yes, the combatants are still fighting the war Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan began in 1948 when they rejected the U.N. partition.

Unfortunately, as long as Palestinian civilians wittingly or otherwise become human shields because Palestinian combatants use residential neighborhoods to store weapons and launch missiles, there will be accidents.

Military accidents are not uncommon. Consider this: as of Nov. 9, there were 2,279 U.S. casualties in Iraq from hostile forces. There were another 559 of our own soldiers killed (about 20 percent) in accidents. Dare we look at the accidental Iraqi civilian body count?

The geopolitics of the Levant are, on the whole, tribal rather than nation-state. Americans generally don't understand tribalism. Thus, in the words of Mark Twain, "It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt."

NIR KOSSOVSKY
Point Breeze

The writer is a former captain, U.S. Navy Reserve.

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Lessons for Bush

The president recently made a spurious comment about the lessons from Vietnam that justify making no changes in his failed Iraq policy.

The real lessons for Mr. Bush from Vietnam are: don't lie to the American people to validate intervention in a sovereign nation; don't have a secretary of defense who can't read history, misunderstands the "enemy's" culture and is willing to sacrifice American lives for the sake of his ego; and when you know that all the sophisticated weapons you possess can't overcome a people's will, declare victory and leave.

All that Ivy League education surely was wasted.

BOB WILLISON
Rices Landing

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Insult to voters

I find it amusing that the Republicans, led by Rush Limbaugh, are professing that the Democrats didn't win on Election Day, the Republicans lost. The almighty Republicans merely didn't get their message across, while the wily Democrats had no plan other than "vote the Republicans out."

What an insult to the American voters. The Republicans would have us believe that the voters didn't do their homework, didn't research the candidates and the issues, didn't know why they were voting. With that "holier than thou" attitude the Republicans might want to worry about the presidential election in '08.

Instead of viewing the voters as their inept students, they should look at us as their assertive bosses, demanding accountability from them.

PHYLLIS GREGOR
Penn Hills

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The excitement of holidays is ruined with all-too-early commercial hype

Unbelievable! While listening to the radio last week, I heard Christmas songs. Isn't it bad enough that stores start to display their holiday decorations weeks before Halloween? Now we have to listen to Christmas songs in the middle of November? Thanksgiving isn't even here yet.

Where's the anticipation and excitement? Gone, because the commercial end is pounding out its ads, displays and songs. You watch: Right after Christmas, or maybe even before, the Valentine displays will be out. Amazing!

Why is it that no matter what it is -- a holiday, an election, a news story or whatever -- the media or the merchandisers beat it to death? I for one am sick and tired of hearing and seeing the same things over and over and over again. I guess that's why I'm an avid book reader instead of a television watcher or a radio listener.

Let's go back to the good old days when holidays were fun, filled with excitement, anticipation and family togetherness. Let's not make these days full of stress and credit card balances that are out of this world. Peace, love, happiness and good health are what it's all about.

N.J. KREUTZ
Mount Washington

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