Letters, 7/22: Spend lives, treasure better
Edgar Pearlstein’s letter (July 18) spoke some good sense about Iraq. We have to separate the colossal blunders that (1) got us there and (2) wasted our victory, from the debate of what comes next. And we must stop polarizing the discussion.
Bush’s successor, whoever, will have to clean up his tragic mess. Barack Obama will have to back off the 16-month or so promise. (Unless Afghanistan gets so bad that drawdown in Iraq is obviously unavoidable.) Straight-talking John McCain speaks with forked tongue when he says “100 years is fine with me,” and then waffles with qualifiers like “presence” and “no one getting killed.” There is no conceivable scenario for that either.
What McCain means is the popular We Will Stay As Long As It Takes. An open-ended commitment to keep Iraq among our highest national priorities, however we might need those resources elsewhere. Iraq is not important enough for that pledge.
We cannot afford a 100-year, or 50-year or 10-year campaign in Iraq, even if casualties ended tomorrow and a friendly, unified, stable, secular, democratic Iraq was likely to emerge at the end of the tunnel. We can cross off two or three of these previous goals right now.
We cannot afford what we’ve already invested there. By overseeing this Iraqi insurgency we are crippling ourselves and unforgivably handicapping our grandchildren, not to mention badly eroding our ability to fight terrorists.
We must weigh how better to spend lives and treasure, whatever the possible consequences over there. A ton of devastation in our wake is a given, along with animosity and loss of international stature and advantage. We’re fiddling now with decisions that might somehow alleviate a little bit, but won’t erase it, and will cost us plenty more that we cannot afford.
Tom deShazo, Lincoln
A slippery slope
Government is bailing out home loan companies to the tune of billions of dollars. President Bush says he won’t bail out General Motors, but the way bailouts are going, don’t bet on it.
General Motors is laying off, freezing pay, closing plants, discontinuing some models and trying to sell off others to keep afloat.
One thing they are also doing is quitting health insurance on salaried retirees at age 65. How convenient that is the age Americans can draw from a government medical program called Medicare.
If America gets national health care, what’s to keep poorly managed companies from quitting their employee health insurance at an age younger than 65 and expecting a bailout. How many workers including me have you heard say I’d quit work except for my company’s health insurance?
When people live as good or better not working than working, odds are they’ll quit work. America’s shrinking taxpayer base is sliding into a hole that will be hard to climb out of.
Bill Allen, Blue Springs
The $35M is just interest
Why? Why do the county commissioners want to indenture their citizens 20 versus 10 years and charge them as much as $100 million for a jail that’s worth $65 million?
The up to $35 million extra is only interest. It does nothing for Lancaster County, its citizens, nor does it improve the new jail’s quality or standards.
The up to $35 million would, however, buy 8.75 million gallons of $4 gasoline to transport prisoners to and from court (based on 10 miles roundtrip, at 15 miles per gallon). That’s a lot of gas, folks; enough for more than 13 million trips.
Gary Enevoldsen, Lincoln
Bush’s successor, whoever, will have to clean up his tragic mess. Barack Obama will have to back off the 16-month or so promise. (Unless Afghanistan gets so bad that drawdown in Iraq is obviously unavoidable.) Straight-talking John McCain speaks with forked tongue when he says “100 years is fine with me,” and then waffles with qualifiers like “presence” and “no one getting killed.” There is no conceivable scenario for that either.
What McCain means is the popular We Will Stay As Long As It Takes. An open-ended commitment to keep Iraq among our highest national priorities, however we might need those resources elsewhere. Iraq is not important enough for that pledge.
We cannot afford a 100-year, or 50-year or 10-year campaign in Iraq, even if casualties ended tomorrow and a friendly, unified, stable, secular, democratic Iraq was likely to emerge at the end of the tunnel. We can cross off two or three of these previous goals right now.
We cannot afford what we’ve already invested there. By overseeing this Iraqi insurgency we are crippling ourselves and unforgivably handicapping our grandchildren, not to mention badly eroding our ability to fight terrorists.
We must weigh how better to spend lives and treasure, whatever the possible consequences over there. A ton of devastation in our wake is a given, along with animosity and loss of international stature and advantage. We’re fiddling now with decisions that might somehow alleviate a little bit, but won’t erase it, and will cost us plenty more that we cannot afford.
Tom deShazo, Lincoln
A slippery slope
Government is bailing out home loan companies to the tune of billions of dollars. President Bush says he won’t bail out General Motors, but the way bailouts are going, don’t bet on it.
General Motors is laying off, freezing pay, closing plants, discontinuing some models and trying to sell off others to keep afloat.
One thing they are also doing is quitting health insurance on salaried retirees at age 65. How convenient that is the age Americans can draw from a government medical program called Medicare.
If America gets national health care, what’s to keep poorly managed companies from quitting their employee health insurance at an age younger than 65 and expecting a bailout. How many workers including me have you heard say I’d quit work except for my company’s health insurance?
When people live as good or better not working than working, odds are they’ll quit work. America’s shrinking taxpayer base is sliding into a hole that will be hard to climb out of.
Bill Allen, Blue Springs
The $35M is just interest
Why? Why do the county commissioners want to indenture their citizens 20 versus 10 years and charge them as much as $100 million for a jail that’s worth $65 million?
The up to $35 million extra is only interest. It does nothing for Lancaster County, its citizens, nor does it improve the new jail’s quality or standards.
The up to $35 million would, however, buy 8.75 million gallons of $4 gasoline to transport prisoners to and from court (based on 10 miles roundtrip, at 15 miles per gallon). That’s a lot of gas, folks; enough for more than 13 million trips.
Gary Enevoldsen, Lincoln
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