Columnist mistaken about the poll numbers Although...

Columnist mistaken about the poll numbers

Although an avid fan of Joe Bell, I feel compelled to write and

rebut a couple of points he made in the Bell Curve, “Keep us blessed

with the right to dissent,” from March 20.

Bell stated that he counts himself among the 60% of our population

who don’t support military action without U.N. sanction, and among

the 50% who don’t support it at this time at all. I grew up in a part

of the country where nearly every bumper had a sticker on it

emblazoned with the motto “Get the U.S. out of the U.N.” The events

of the past few months should provide ample reasons for us to print

up a bunch more of these stickers and vigorously renew that campaign.

When the U.N. Security Council put the U.S. into the position of

having to beg Cameroon for the right to take action that the council

had previously approved unanimously via Resolution 1441, I believe

any reasonable person would agree the U.N. has outlived its

usefulness. Considering that the U.N. has placed Libya in charge of

defending international human rights, and has named Iraq as

next-in-line to chair the commission in charge of disarmament, one

has to laugh out loud. And considering that France has openly stated

that it wishes to become the counterbalance to hold U.N. power in

check, and in fact clearly sabotaged the U.S. effort to win a

majority vote in the council, I for one recommend that the U.N.

should move to less expensive real estate. I’m thinking Paris, maybe

on the Left Bank.

As a Vietnam-era soldier, I was detailed to Paris in 1968 for

several months to help catalog the millions of American items we had

to remove from France. Gen. DeGaulle, the guy you’ll recall whose

bacon we saved from the Germans during World War II, ordered America

to get its possessions and soldiers out of France, and gave us a year

to comply (Operation FRELOC). Night and day, seven days a week, we

loaded thousands of semi trailers with everything that wasn’t nailed

down. Tractors then hooked up these trailers and drove them as

quickly as possible to just over the borders with Germany or

Luxembourg or Belgium and dropped them off. It took literally years

to locate these trailers and repatriate them, and cost hundreds of

millions of dollars. The French didn’t care then, and they don’t care

now.

Maybe what we need is an entirely new organization of

industrialized democracies. Maybe we could call it the Union of the

Willing. Then France and China and Russia and several dozen

dictatorships could sit around and contemplate their navels while the

U.S. and its friends go about the business of finding and ridding the

world of terrorists, wherever they may be.

I agree with Bell that war is terrible. But when it’s necessary to

wage it, to not do so is always a mistake. And I, and more than 60%

of my fellow citizens as of this writing agree this one’s necessary.

Bell, you have the right to dissent you so embrace, as do we all.

That right was purchased with the blood of Americans who fell in

battles defending our country and its ideals. We had to fight for

those rights then and we on occasion have to fight to keep them. This

is one of those times.

CHUCK CASSITY

Costa Mesa

Retiring to a state of verbosity

In covering Col. David Hackworth’s talk with Newport Harbor High

students, Joseph N. Bell has much to say concerning the colonel’s

disagreements with President Bush’s decision to evict Saddam Hussein

from power in Iraq (“Keep us blessed with the right to dissent,”

March 20). Some of what he and the colonel have to say, however, are

not backed up by recent facts.

Bell errs when he writes that “nine-tenths of the world and half

the United States is strongly opposed to this war.” A recent Gallup

poll from March 19 shows that 64% of Americans support the war with

Iraq. Also, although nonsupport by France, Russia and Germany has

dominated the headlines, a coalition of nations has come about that

support the current military actions underway.

Stealing from a column appearing in a local newspaper, I believe

that what dissenter Bell has demonstrated so effectively is that “old

soldiers” (like Hackworth) “never die, they just become verbose.” We

all should remember we are not beginning a war, we are ending an

unfinished one.

LEFTERIS LAVRAKAS

Costa Mesa

Pilot coverage is missing truth of war opposition

Where is truth? As they say, truth is the first casualty of war,

and that has been painfully obvious in the pages of the Daily Pilot.

Recently, you printed a picture and small article about the “few

dozen” pro-war supporters gathered at South Coast Plaza at noon on a

Saturday. The next day, you ran a picture and much larger article

about the six people (four of whom were children out for the day with

grandma) supporting George Bush who gathered on a Jamboree corner in

Newport Beach. A visitor to our community would think that a few

Newport-Mesa residents support the war and that everyone else is

apathetic. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Where were your reporters on the Friday evening after the war

started when more than 250 people showed up at Bristol Street and

Anton Boulevard to support our troops and oppose this illegal,

unnecessary war? Where were the pictures and articles about the more

than 200 people who came out on a cold, windy Sunday two weeks ago at

Niketown for a candlelight vigil, praying to spare the lives of our

soldiers forced into a war of greed and imperialism?

Why is the Daily Pilot ignoring the large gatherings and focusing

on the small ones? Is fairness in reporting not a tenet of the Pilot?

You may choose not to cover the opposition to the war, but you will

not silence the voice of democracy. Peace.

MAGGIE GALLAGHER

Costa Mesa

Newport-Mesa does welcome open debate

In his Thursday column, S.J. Cahn missed the point (“Keep the

debate alive”). Of course, we Newport-Mesa residents are in favor of

debating differing points of view, but just try finding a

conservative point of view printed in any major newspaper. Most

readers of the Daily Pilot also subscribe to the Los Angeles Times,

so the liberal view permeates the majority of our news. If the Daily

Pilot takes a conservative slant, then the balance is there, and we

are happy about it.

Having just returned from six years in the Bay Area, I can tell

you that there is very little reporting in California that reflects

the conservative minority. The Daily Pilot’s lean to right is a

breath of fresh air for those of us who also crave an expression of

our views, and Cahn should not quash that.

SALLY E. MAY

Newport Beach