Letters: Sep. 27, 2004

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YOU REPORTED THAT "BUSH CONSTANTLY cites the example of postwar Germany and Japan to argue that it is far too soon to call Iraq a failure." But it is prewar Germany, in the years 1933-39, that gives many of us a frightening, disheartening parallel: How could a nation of well-educated, civilized, sophisticated people believe the rhetoric of a fanatic leader pretending their lives were threatened by obviously weaker neighbors, and follow him into a disastrous pre-emptive war?

NICOLAS GESSNER Paris

BUSH IS PRAISED FOR BEING BRAVE AND decisive for the actions he took after the attacks of 9/11, but why, when his bravery and snap decisions based on trumped-up evidence have proved disastrously wrong and damaging? Neither the U.S., in its long-term interests, nor the world can afford another four years of Bush and his unilateralism.

MICHAEL KROMBERG Kongsberg, Norway

A New Legitimacy Needed

MARK THATCHER, SON OF FORMER BRITISH Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, has been charged with helping finance a plot to overthrow Teodoro Obiang Nguema, President of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea [Sept. 6]. Nguema's regime is undemocratic, but Thatcher and his wealthy friends did not have any legitimacy to overthrow it. The U.S., however, by deciding unilaterally and without the approval of the U.N. to topple the bloody and dictatorial regime of Saddam, has provided a poor example to the world. What will now stop regional powers--or even individuals--from intervening in neighboring countries? A proper, legal vision of intervention must be reconstructed at once and action taken only when a resolution approved by U.N. members has deemed that intervention is legitimate.

PAUL VAN DER SCHUEREN Paris

The Price of Spurious Ads

JOE KLEIN'S COLUMN "WHAT THE SWIFTIES Have Cost Us" [Sept. 6], on the way political attack ads like those by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have stifled real political debate, was refreshing. It is very disheartening that politics has become a constant bashing of opponents instead of focusing on the issues and actually doing something to address them. It's especially discouraging when you consider what good might be done with the funds that are used to wage misdirected political wars.

SCOTT A. FARBER Boston

Prisoner of the Nazis

I WAS STUNNED TO SEE THE TERM "POL-ish labor camp" in the Milestone on the death of Navajo code talker Frank Sanache [Sept. 6]. The Nazis organized and ran the German concentration, labor and POW camps of World War II [including the one in what is now Poland where Sanache was imprisoned]. We need to preserve the truth about atrocities committed by the Nazis instead of creating harmful stereotypes that involve Poland.

PRZEMYSLAW GRUDZINSKI AMBASSADOR OF THE REPUBLIC OF POLAND TO THE U.S. Washington

The Dream Team No More