Letters to the Editor

Keep the U.N. out … of the Internet

Although the management of the Internet by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) raises a number of questions, the United Nations is emphatically not the answer (“Web we weaved,” Inside the Beltway, April 13). (The column reports on an international push to transfer management responsibilities to “an international body appointed by the United Nations.”)

For all of its shortcomings, ICANN, which was established by Congress, generally has been apolitical. The United Nations, by contrast, is an intensely political entity. Moreover, many of the countries that seek greater “internationalization” of Internet governance have long histories of strict censorship and other repressive actions toward their own citizens. Allowing such politicized control of the Internet would sharply increase the likelihood of international censorship, the cutting of national access and other adverse actions against the Net. The result would be to degrade the potential of the Internet, not just for the industrialized countries, but also for the developing world.

There is no question that Internet governance needs to be substantially more transparent and responsive. However, the solution is an increased, not reduced, role for the Department of Commerce. More specifically, were the department to ensure that ICANN adhered to the Data Quality Act, many of the enhanced transparency and utility goals for Internet governance could be achieved without politicization of the process.

BRUCE LEVINSON

Center for Regulatory Effectiveness

Washington

Where’s the outrage?

In a Friday letter to the editor that The Washington Times disturbingly titled “A few bad apples,” letter writer Twamonowiye Daniel ignores the facts and scope of Islamic terrorism and admonishes readers not to “stereotype religions based on the acts of a small group of people.” A small group of people?

It is hardly a “small group of people” that has perpetrated terrorist acts in Bali, the Philippines, India, Pakistan, Spain, Iraq, Russia, Israel, Kenya, France, New York City, the Pentagon and the skies above Pennsylvania — in fact, nearly every act of terror occurring weekly around the globe in this millennium. These villains could hardly engage in such widespread violence without the support of numerous Muslim financiers and enablers. If Miss Daniel could rise above her naivete, she would observe the large number of Muslim clerics that promote this brutality, and she would see that no major Muslim organization unconditionally condemns it.

The indolent reaction by Muslims to Muslim terror stands in stark contrast to the almost universal condemnation by Christians and Christian clergy of the relatively few instances of violence committed by those who cloak themselves in Christianity — for example, the murder of abortionists to which Miss Daniel refers.

Whether Islam teaches peace, as Miss Daniel avers, is debatable. What’s plain as the blood splattered over the inside of a Spanish commuter train is that Islam motivates the lion’s share of terrorist bloodletting around the world, and Muslim leaders are doing nothing to stop it.

SAMUEL R. LEWIS

Oak Hill, Va.

A valid Vietnam comparison

I found Arnaud de Borchgrave’s Friday Commentary column about the parallels between Vietnam and Iraq deeply moving (“A mini-Tet offensive?”). Those parallels are not the ones touted by the critics of the Bush administration. They are more deeply disturbing. One point Mr. de Borchgrave makes is that the popular press’s reporting on this war, like that on Vietnam, cannot be trusted. You just cannot believe anything you read about war in the papers or see on TV. It is a terrible thing for our democracy.

JAY VAIL

Tallahassee, Fla.

Hyde, bishop wrong about Israel’s wall

Bishop Wilton Gregory demonstrated great integrity and wisdom in dealing with the sex scandal that recently enveloped the Catholic Church. Rep. Henry Hyde has long been Congress’ leading voice in eloquently championing the rights of unborn children. So how can both of these obviously intelligent men spew such vapid sentiments regarding Israel’s reasonable efforts to defend its citizens (“Christians call Israel’s wall damaging to peace, people,” Nation, Friday)?

Bishop Gregory complained of the protective wall’s “devastating effect” on families in the region. The thousands of families who have had members blown to bits by homicide bombers likely would argue that such actions have a far more “devastating effect” than having to detour around an inconvenient barrier. Mr. Hyde’s ill-conceived protestations play into the hands of abortion rights advocates who smear pro-lifers as unconcerned about children after they are born. Surely Mr. Hyde realizes that the babies lost to nail-laden bombs are as deserving of protection as the innocents sucked out of their mothers’ wombs in abortion clinics.

Other religious leaders lament that Christian social workers are “unable to reach their jobs because of the wall.” Thousand of Israelis (Jews, Christians and Muslims) will never again “reach their jobs” because terrorists detonated bombs in their midst and savagely ended their lives.

Mr. Hyde, Bishop Gregory and the other Christian leaders know better. They cannot preach the culture of life while tacitly supporting the culture of death by their shortsighted objections.

STEVEN FANTINA

Phillipsburg, N.J.

Douglass: one among many

Tom O’Brien’s article “Douglass shines at Lincoln statue unveiling,” (The Civil War, Saturday) provides a detailed account of the dedication of the Freedmen’s Memorial Monument in Lincoln Park in 1876.

Mr. O’Brien qualified a sentence which reads, “Indeed, [Frederick] Douglass was perhaps the one black man Lincoln got to know well.”

Lincoln, in fact, had many black friends whom he knew better than Douglass. An invaluable account of these friendships can be found in the book “They Knew Lincoln,” by John E. Washington.

Washington grew up around the corner from Ford’s Theatre, where several of Lincoln’s White House staff members, or their surviving families, lived in retirement. He interviewed them, and this book, which has a forward by Carl Sandburg, resulted. It is unique in Lincoln scholarship.

NEIL SCOTT

Washington

The problem isn’t Israel

Evidently, Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s perennial president, continues to believe that the Palestinian problem is the great grievance that has unhinged the Middle East (“Mubarak insists Palestinian, Iraqi solutions linked,” Briefing/Middle East, Wednesday). That presumption begs the question: Does the Palestinian-Israeli conflict really explain the depravity we are witnessing in Iraq? Suppose tomorrow Israel slipped into the sea. Would that mollify the fanatics in Tehran? Or just suppose we could factor out Israel. Would that turn OsamabinLadenintoa peacenik? Can anyone ascribe the internecine clashes in Sudan or Algeria to the Palestinian problem? What could Israel possibly have done to avert the bombing in Bali last year or the more recent suicide bombings in Madrid that killed 191 people and injured more than 1,800? Blaming Israel has always been the easy answer, but it is the wrong answer.

MITCHELL FINKEL

Silver Spring