People dying everyday in Afghanistan
Editor, The Times:
The picture of Pierce County sheriff’s deputy Kent Mundell’s casket being led down the hallway is very sad [“Officers escort fallen deputy,” page one, Dec. 30].
But there are images like this quite often in Afghanistan, sometimes with six caskets.
Rightfully, society here pays a great amount of respect to fallen police officers, usually with massive funerals, traffic disruptions, and lately with wall-to-wall television coverage.
In the Afghan society, when one of our bombs kill an innocent civilian, they also have massive funerals. Why is the sorrow for our soldiers so low key in comparison? Why did our own government, until recently, bar pictures of soldiers caskets?
I am reminded of the quote by Joseph Stalin, “One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic.”
— Ben McDonald, Seattle
Department of Corrections needs to do its job
The facts and figures emanating from the Justice Department mandate that we have to get smart on crime, cut our prison populations, and reduce the unbelievable costs involved [“Was weapons cache legal?,” NWThursday, Dec. 24].
Our schools and other social services need the money that is being wasted on life sentences for petty crimes and the nonproductive time people are spending behind bars.
It doesn’t make any sense to have a Department of Corrections if there’s no correction going on.
The time behind bars should be spent on improvement. We must fund the methods of correction and improvement that will allow individuals to re-enter society and not reoffend.
We need to do everything we can to keep future generations out of prison and everything we can to provide those currently incarcerated with the wherewithal to succeed.
— Moira Hennings O’Crotty, Tacoma