Letters to the Editor

Teaching children to deal with reality

In response to Joyce Howard Price’s “Antidepressant use by preschoolers rising” (Page 1, Saturday):

The rapidly increasing number of children on antidepressants is alarming. First of all, medicating an unhappy child teaches him that the way to cope with unhappiness is to take a pill and that it is healthy to medicate depression’s symptoms without first seeking the underlying cause. Children learn that being happy is “normal,” as if the world never gives us legitimate cause to be sad, sometimes for weeks or more at a time. Rather than learning to depend on mind-altering drugs, children should learn to cope with the inevitable pain and sadness of life, which they can’t do while under the influence of psychotropic drugs. Instead, they should be taught that it is possible to cope with pain without ingesting drugs.

Second, one must wonder about the physical consequences of medication, particularly on preschoolers. If caffeine has been shown to be harmful to small children, what effect must daily prescriptions have on their growing bodies?

JOCELYN ESKOW

Bethesda

Diplomatic duplicity

In his otherwise excellent Op-Ed column “Walking the tightrope” (Tuesday), Sen. George Allen makes a serious mistake when he says, “U.S. policy asserts there is but one China.”

The United States makes no such assertion, and its “one China policy” means we will have diplomatic relations only with the People’s Republic of China, which we recognize as the legitimate government of China. The United States makes no statement about the status of Taiwan. Instead, in the communique of Jan. 1, 1979, recognizing Beijing, we acknowledged the Chinese position that there is but one China, of which Taiwan is a part. “Acknowledge”isdiplomatic-speak for “we hear you, we know that is what you claim.”

Sen. Allen is hardly alone in misconstruing a policy so recondite and so divorced from the obvious reality of our world. The reality is that Taiwan exists, that it is not part of the People’s Republic of China and that its democracy-loving 23 million people would resist forcible incorporation into the communist state. It is a reality that should be better reflected in American policy.

HARVEY J. FELDMAN

U.S. ambassador (retired)

Arlington

Clinton report highlighted terrorism

Tuesday’s front-page story, “Al Qaeda absent from final Clinton report” reported disapprovingly that President Clinton’s final national security strategy report never mentioned “al Qaeda” by name.

To have highlighted “al Qaeda” or “bin Laden” by name in 2000 would have lent them the very publicity and stature they so eagerly sought — thus the limited references to bin Laden in the document. Curiously, your story failed to note that the same Clinton report referenced terrorism a rather extraordinary 92 times.

Apart from having approved and previously used lethal force for the purpose of killing bin Laden, Mr. Clinton and his administration had two responsibilities in December 2000: to publicly alert the American people to the growing threat from terrorism and to privately brief the incoming Bush administration on the covert war we had been fighting against our terrorist enemies.

In public, Mr. Clinton gave more than 10 major speeches on terrorism, made extensive references to terrorism in more than 60 other speeches (including every State of the Union) and mentioned terrorism more than 200 additional times in other public comments.

In private, Mr. Clinton urged President-elect Bush to recognize the greater threat terrorism posed over the issues of Iraq and national missile defense. In private, National Security Adviser Samuel R. Berger warned Condoleezza Rice that the top security threat to the nation was terrorism in general and al Qaeda in particular. In private, national counterterrorismcoordinator Richard A. Clarke provided extensive transition briefings emphasizing the priority threat from bin Laden, and Mr. Clinton’s CIA director, George Tenet, issued a secret declaration of war against al Qaeda.

It wasn’t our job to be bin Laden’s publicist, but it was our job to alert the American people to the overall threat from terrorism and to provide the incoming Bush administration with much greater detail on our ongoing efforts to destroy al Qaeda — which is precisely what Mr. Clinton and his advisers did, over and over again.

STEVEN J. NAPLAN

Former director for multilateral and humanitarian affairs, 1997 - Jan. 2001

National Security Council

Washington

Memorial to victims of communism

We notice in your March 31 Op-Ed “Lest we forget” that you incorrectly referenced the National Capital Planning Commission in discussing the proposed memorial to the victims of communism. The memorial project has not yet come before the National Capital Planning Commission, and I believe the body you meant to refer to in your piece is the National Capital Memorial Advisory Commission. The names of government agencies can sometimes be confusing, but it is important that members of the public be accurately informed about the actions of federal agencies.

DENISE H. LIEBOWITZ

Office of Public Affairs

National Capital Planning Commission

Washington

Muslims and Jews for Kerry

The attempt by your editorial board (“Inept or ignorant?” Wednesday) to deal with Sen. John Kerry’s relationship with the Muslim and Jewish communities appears itself to be either inept or ignorant. The piece was a thinly veiled attempt to adopt the Bush-Cheney strategy and portray Mr. Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, as a politician who panders to any group he thinks will help him at the time, including those with anti-Semitic members or viewpoints.

You failed to discuss Mr. Kerry’s overall relationship with many mainstream Muslim and Jewish organizations and community leaders, and you have distorted the record of the Bush administration with regard to Muslim Americans. At a time when a poll in the Detroit area indicates that 85 percent of that area’s Muslims disapprove of President Bush’s job performance, you portray Mr. Kerry’s claim that the Bush administration is not protecting the rights of Muslims as something not based on “facts or any reasonable interpretation of reality.”

Your readers would be well-served by a more responsible comparison of the Bush administration’s and Mr. Kerry’s relationships with Muslims and Jews. Hopefully, the comparison would more closely resemble the facts and reality than this editorial.

BRIAN A. HAYDEN

Washington