Letters: Dec. 6, 2004

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Many voters failed to consider the morality of a pre-emptive military action that has resulted in the death of thousands of Iraqi civilians. It's wrong to label people as unpatriotic or lacking in traditional values because they are just as saddened by those foreign deaths as they are by the lives lost on 9/11 and American military casualties. The term morality and all that it connotes should not be cheapened into a political device.

JOHN MILLER

Baltimore, Md.

A lot of Americans who regularly attend church believe that gay marriage, abortion and stem-cell research are sins. Many others don't think those are really sins and don't go to church much but do believe that invading a country and causing thousands of deaths and incalculable misery to innocent people is a sin. I wonder whom God will forgive.

HARRIET ROBINSON

Doylestown, Pa.

Let's see if I have this straight.  It's O.K. to lie about the reasons for invading another country but not O.K. for two men or two women to marry. It's O.K. to hand our children a budget deficit that will choke them but not O.K. to use stem cells to fight disease. It's O.K. to duck the real war on terrorism, jeopardize Social Security and take a pass on fixing the health-care system but not O.K. to believe in the separation of church and state. Would those be the famous "moral values"? Thanks, but no. You keep yours; I'll keep mine.

DENISE DUNNE-DEVANEY

Sekiu, Wash.

Dining with the Devil

Columnist Andrew Sullivan's "Let's Have a Truce" [Nov. 15] urged both parties to put the election behind them and work together. We have a President, however, who has alienated half of this country and most of the rest of the world by his irresponsible actions. Asking those who are sickened by Bush's past four years to declare a truce is like asking a Fundamentalist Christian to have lunch with the devil. It's not going to happen.

RICHARD MOBERG

Philadelphia

Sullivan tells us we should get over it and support Bush because in wartime we owe him a second chance. Excuse me? Why are we in wartime, and who put us there? As an American citizen, I owe Bush nothing.

LOLA FALSTAD

Seattle

Are we supposed to wave the flag and rally behind our President so that he can finish the job he had no business starting--launching some new wars against other countries we think threaten our God-given right to rule the planet and bleed it dry, all while turning the U.S. into a cross between a theocracy and an oligarchy? I'd move to Canada first.

MARTIN KRACKLAUER

Austin, Texas

The election campaign was extremely divisive. Voters were called on to recognize fundamental differences between the candidates. The issues of character and values may have given the edge to Bush. So how can one call for a truce if such important issues are at stake, and why should the nation fall in line behind President Bush? Harmony does not come from a nation united behind its leader, giving him a second chance. It comes from responsible citizens working toward and arguing about the principles they want to build their society on.

PETER MOLNAR

Pezinok, Slovakia