Letters

Known threat

For eight years during the 1970s, my daughter Karen lived in the French Quarter of New Orleans. I have visited those beautiful streets many times and know the area well.

My daughter and I are greatly disturbed to hear of the damage caused by hurricane Katrina, which was just waiting to happen because the area is 10 feet below sea level. In 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency ranked a hurricane strike in New Orleans among the three most likely catastrophes facing the U.S. In spite of this, the Bush White House cut funding for the Army Corps of Engineers, which would have improved the levees.

We both agree that if all the money, human resources and equipment sent to Iraq were used in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, homeland security would be greatly improved — by caring, not killing.

June Krebs
Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom

Arguing with Mother Nature

Precipitating much grief and turmoil, the Israeli government evacuated its citizens out of Gaza just weeks ago, reportedly paying each family upwards of $200,000 to establish new lives on safer ground.

As we in the Chestnut Hill community open our hearts, pocketbooks and homes to the refugees of the hurricane-devastated gulf region, perhaps we, as a nation, should follow suit and return the below-sea level portions of Mississippi and Louisiana to the Gulf of Mexico and Mother Nature, who will have no truck with human folly.

Brian Rudnick
Chestnut Hill

Senseless sacrifice

In his letters to the editor, Joseph Ferry has plenty to say about what parents of soldiers killed in Iraq should think. I was frankly disgusted to hear Mr. Ferry characterize Ms. Zappala’s criticisms of this reckless war as leftie opportunism. Given that the majority of Americans agree with Ms. Zappala, Mr. Ferry must feel confounded by the sheer multitudes likewise yielding to muddled liberalism. It must be perplexing for Mr. Ferry to discover that most of his neighbors and countrymen are given to such leftwing blather about this war being costly, expensive, and counterproductive.

Most Americans have come to this conclusion without benefit of a dead child to exploit. Of course, I would have thought the mother of dead soldier should have at least as much right to express her opinion as Mr. Ferry. I guess ideological purity trumps sacrifice when it comes to being a true American. Of course, the Republican Party is much better at talking about sacrifice than experiencing it.

Maybe it would be helpful, Mr. Ferry, if you would write a pamphlet teaching families of soldiers killed in Iraq how to bereave with integrity and honor. Use your superior insight to instruct these parents how to properly hold their shoulders high — not to mention suspend their critical judgment. Talk to them about the nobility of their sacrifice. Talk about nobility as much as possible. But do not talk about wisdom. Because the question has never been if Saddam was an evil man (he is), or even if the Iraqi people are better off without him (probably). The real question — and the one that troubles so many of your neighbors — is this: “Did this war make America stronger or weaker?” Thousands have been killed, hundreds of billions of dollars spent, resources tied up in the Middle East indefinitely, America’s prestige in the world absolutely decimated — all of it to the benefit of Iran and China. Describe this invasion as noble if you wish, but don’t say a word about the sense of it — because it is senseless.

If you don’t think they’re gleeful about this war in Beijing and Teheran, you need to start watching a little less FOX news. Our enemies are rejoicing at the incompetence of our leadership. China is more than willing to let us borrow endless billions from them to finance a war that ultimately makes us weaker. And Iran seems to find it great fun manipulating events in Iraq, working overtime to create a satellite state next door. Unlike the disasters of 9/11 and Katrina, the administration can’t claim that “no one could have predicted this” (even though each had been predicted). Unlike 9/11 and Katrina, there is no one for Bush to try to shirk responsibility onto, because he went out of his way to stumble into this disaster — stuffing his ears with cotton while writers, academics and army officers warned him against invading Iraq. It’s like Bush drove a thousand miles to poke his eye out with a stick.

Ms. Zappala has all the right in the world to say this is a senseless war. The death of her child simply gives her the authority to say what most of us think: that it was a mistake to let George Bush play poker with our destiny. The best way to honor our soldiers is to think carefully about how we use them. Ms. Zappala knows this much better than you, Mr. Ferry.

Robert Slack
Germantown

Inconsistent

I enjoyed Joseph Ferry’s letter to the Local of Sept. 8, “Position Mischaracterized” regarding Jimmy Pack’s distortion of Mr. Ferry’s point of view in his letter in the Aug. 25 edition. Mr. Ferry shouldn’t have stopped there, however, as there were further rants by Mr. Pack in the Aug. 25 edition, which also merit comment. For example, in the opinion piece about Mr. Ferry’s letter, Mr. Pack espouses a liberal point of view on the subject of the war in Iraq. Yet in his “Pub Crawler” column in the Local Life section, Mr. Pack and his drinking buddies fume about elderly drivers who shouldn’t be on the road and “broads” who block their parking spots.

Those ageist and sexist remarks, which appear frequently in Mr. Pack’s columns, seem inconsistent with what one would expect from the intellectual left. Meanwhile, Mr. Pack and his pub crawling friends who “raise their pints” and complain about the alleged impairment of older drivers might consider the hypocrisy of it all when they then climb into their own cars and drive home impaired by the consumption of alcohol.

Barbara Shoemaker Zamochnick
Wyndmoor

Editor’s note: Mr. Pack assures us that he would never drive drunk, a conviction helped by the fact that he and his pub-crawling friends all live, and do their imbibing, in pedestrian-friendly Chestnut Hill.

Reviewer review

After reading Jimmy J. Pack, Jr.’s review of Rick Santorum’s book, It Takes a Family (Local, Aug. 18), I regret to say that Mr. Pack may be more in need of editors than enablers, and that the editors of the Local have lost sight of this difference. I am not prepared, as other readers are, simply to shed Mr. Pack from the Local’s regular writers. His travel pieces and reviews of trash television add a measure of zest to the sometimes-dull news of the Northwest. But for serious books the editors should likely go to the next person on the list, especially since book reviews are so infrequent.

Of course, to say that It Takes a Family is a serious book does not mean Santorum is right. It does mean, though, that the senator’s ideas about families, education, the environment, and culture, topics that fill the pages of the Local every week and that absorb the interests of Chestnut Hillers, if going to be reviewed, need more care than put downs such as “Santorum is clearly living in La-La Land.”

Even Jonathan Rauch, the author of Gay Marriage: Why it’s Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America (2004) wrote recently in his review, “As a policy book, It Takes a Family is temperate. It serves up a healthy reminder that society needs not just good government but strong civil and social institutions, and that the traditional family serves all kinds of essential social functions. Government policies, therefore, should respect and support family and civil society instead of undermining or supplanting them. Parents should make quality time at home a high priority. Popular culture should comport itself with some sense of responsibility and taste. Few outside the hard cultural Left — certainly not Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., who makes several cameos as Santorum’s bete noir — would disagree with much of that.”

Unless, of course, you’re Mr. Jimmy J. Pack, Jr., who does to Santorum what Jerry Falwell would likely do to a book by Maureen Dowd. My advice — leave the pubs, prime-time television, and the nation’s two-lane highways to Mr. Pack. For books, please find someone else.

D. G. Hart
Chestnut Hill