Letters to the editor

Remove Japan’s peace clause

Finally, in Rich Lowry’s Commentary column “Unleash Japan” (Thursday), a respected voice is saying out loud and convincingly what I have been arguing for decades. Japan must be freed from the peace clause in its constitution so that it can play its key security role as our most reliable Asian ally.

In 1965, when I was a scholar at the Brookings Institution, I shocked my hosts during an address to Japan’s National Defense College faculty by criticizing the military constraints written into the constitution during the U.S. occupation. Japan, I argued, could not become a responsible world power unless it increased defense spending. I also suggested that Tokyo offer to provide military personnel as U.N. peacekeepers in the Middle East. The commandant and his faculty must have thought me half-mad.

My suggestion was premature, but 26 years later, in 1991, after bitter internal controversy, Tokyo sent 500 Self-Defense Force members to the Middle East to serve in a U.N. force. The next year, army engineers went to Cambodia to join another U.N. force — the first Japanese soldiers in 47 years to set foot in Southeast Asia. Also in 1991, Japan contributed $23 billion to support the U.S.-led Gulf war to liberate Kuwait. Finally, in 2003 Tokyo sent 600 noncombat troops to help reconstruction in Iraq.

Acknowledging that Japan is a key ally in maintaining peace in the Pacific, the U.S. should encourage Tokyo to ditch the peace clause.

ERNEST W. LEFEVER

Chevy Chase

Incompatible with freedom?

Talk about overheated rhetoric. In “Facing hard facts” (Op-Ed, Friday), Diana West finds that American “multiculturalists” are “more messianic than Islam,” practice “assault” and “jihad,” and wreak all manner of havoc through their perverse habit of believing that “all civilizations are the same.” Whew.

By multiculturalists, the writer presumably means leftists, no doubt particularly those of the academic stripe. Where she finds these bugaboos that see not a whit of difference, morally or otherwise, between, say, Stalin’s gulags and Jefferson’s Monticello is beyond me.

Unlike these mythical “elites” who apparently wield vast power from their secret enclaves, the writer knows precisely who the enemy is and doesn’t shrink from naming names. It’s not “fundamentalist extremists” or “Islamists” or some other sub-Muslim group that is the problem. According to column, Islam itself is the enemy, and the sooner relativists and those possessed by a “masochistic brand of tolerance” face up to this fact, the better off we’ll all be.

It is big, indeed courageous, to inform readers that the 1 billion or so Muslims, along with the accursed multiculturalists, are so dangerous. Rather than kowtowing to quaint, no doubt outdated notions associated with pluralism, equal protection and the Bill of Rights, the writer isn’t afraid to make the hard choices. She jettisons an entire civilization and indicts a culture of “tolerance” as the great enabler of Islamic viciousness.

Is it really the hypertolerant multiculturalists who are (in her not so thinly disguised hyperbole) anti-American and unpatriotic? True, no one can doubt that Islamic radicalism poses very difficult and pressing challenges on many fronts. However, to exhibit virtually zero respect for the fact that we (like Britain) are a nation composed of many peoples and many cultures is beyond the pale. We have developed protections and due process not for some people — say all non-Muslims — but for all Americans. Pluralism (you know, multiple cultures) and the laws that protect such are a sizable portion of what we mean by democracy.

Indeed, our ideal (never fully achieved) that Lady Justice is blind to race, income, language, religion, status and the like provides the basis by which we can insist that other nations reform. We can and should look at Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and other nations and say, “Your system is unfair, and here’s why.” Miss West has it backward; diversity and respect for the “other” are hardly barriers to progress in the war on terror.

On the contrary, we can speak convincingly and with moral authority to others only to the extent that we continue to maintainourowndemocratic protections. We need these protections now more than ever because of the challenge of war and terror and also because some people don’t seem to grasp a very basic, very American fact: It isn’t merely some fanciful subgroup that is multicultural; our nation itself is.

There is no “gross incompatibility of Islam” with freedom. Read up on the first 1,700 or so years of Christianity to get the obvious: No religion has a monopoly on freedom or the lack thereof.

JOHN M. BATES

Fairfax

How a teacher should be

I am writing in response to the column by Martin Gross (“Weak U.S. education link,” Commentary, Sunday) on Sunday. Mr. Gross is correct in illustrating the shortcomings of U.S. public schools, but he fails to trace the problem of public schools to its core.

I am a 21-year-old student attending the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, with aspirationsofbecomingan educator. I have found that many of my peers seek a passive approach to students, not allowing them to have their feelings hurt when they fail.

It’s akin to a parent teaching an infant to walk but always holding onto the child so he or she never falls.

Aggressive teaching, though it may earn the practitioner a reputation as a “thorn,” is the real key to improving public education in the United States. Foreign schools don’t take failure for an answer. That is why so many foreign students come to the United States to earn their degrees — because universities back home won’t accept their failures.

Schools in the United States need to adopt similar stringent requirements even if it means that some students will need to attend summer school or repeat grades. If this causes these students’ feelings to be hurt, so be it — at least they will leave school with the knowledge they need to compete in the real world.

TRAVIS GORLESKI

Parkton, Md.

Securing Iraq’s boarders

Nasser Karimi’s Associated Press dispatch yesterday commenting on the relationship between Iraq and Iran (“Tehran pledges to crack down on militants,” World) does not go far enough in describing how Iraq must work with its neighbors to control terrorism. While Iraq needs Iran’s help in arresting al Qaeda terrorists, stopping terrorism requires all parties involved to work together as one cohesive unit.

Iraq has 2,300 miles of international borders, just 900 of which touch Iran. Preventing al Qaeda members from crossing the Iran-Iraq border is a limited solution, just as shutting one window to a room while leaving five others open is a partial solution. Iraq also must close the other 1,400 miles bordering Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, Turkey and Syria.

Sealing borders is only a first step, though, and international cooperation must go further. If Iran truly wants to “do its utmost for the restoration of stability and security” in Iraq, as President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated, it will work with Iraq and her allies (including the United States) in coming to a unified solution. This is the only way for the new Iraqi government to gain the strength and respect it needs to stand on its own, and partial cooperation from Iran and others can only result in a partial end of violence in Iraq.

KEVIN ELLERBROCK

Research assistant

National Defense Council Foundation

Alexandria