President announces plan for Afghanistan
Now that President Obama has decided it is in our vital national interest to have 100,000 U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan [“Obama war plan draws hard look,” News, Dec. 3], chasing what the president’s own national-security team has said is fewer than 100 al-Qaida members, it’s time to come to grips with the cost of this war.
To continue as we have done with the Iraq war, and leave to our children and grandchildren the hundreds of billions of dollars in expense for our continuing military operations, is simply immoral. So, too, is relying upon a volunteer military force consisting of 1 to 2 percent of our nation’s people, and forcing them to redeploy over and over and over again to fight our country’s battles.
If this war is really vital to our collective security, then imposing a war tax and reinstituting the draft are the only equitable solutions to allocating its burden among our citizens.
My guess is that the decision makers will see this war quite differently once they start sending their own children and those of their financial backers to Afghanistan.
— Terence Colyer, Shoreline
White House party crashers
The highly paid Secret Service people who allowed Michaele and Tareq Salahi into the White House should be fired and replaced with minimum-wage airport security people [“Celebrity-seeking moron,” Opinion, editorial, Dec. 3].
The White House party crashers would not have able to get past airport security. They insist on ticket, picture identification, coat and shoes before you get in.
Does President Obama and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh not deserve same security?
— Monica Anderson, Shoreline