Letters to the editor

OPINION:

Obama’s scandal

It is a stunning irony that Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama — the individual who asks Americans to look beyond race and who pledges to be the one who can unite the country across racial lines — is embroiled in a race-based scandal that is almost certain to bring down his candidacy.

The latest revelation in the Rev. Jeremiah Wright scandal is stunning: that the church to which Mr. Obama belongs and which he has supported and revered for two decades is based upon a book that advocates destruction of “the white enemy” (“Obama’s church founded on radical creed,” Page 1, Tuesday).

I wonder how Mr. Obama will attempt to get out of this latest mess. Will he attempt to lie, telling us he had no idea what the genesis of his church is, despite his long and close association with its nucleus, Mr. Wright?

Can any speech, no matter how flowery and magnificent, no matter how passionately and beautifully it is delivered, stanch the bleeding and get Americans to believe that day is night because Mr. Obama says so?

Mr. Wright, one who is widely seen as a man of hate rather than as a man of God, has said that this country would never elect a black president. It is likely that the black man who is running for the office in 2008 will not be elected, not because he was not given a fair shake by most Americans, but because he associated himself with Mr. Wright, a virulent hater, bigot and anti-Semite.

The Chicago-based Trinity United Church of Christ motto states that it is “unapologetically Christian,” another irony. I have not been able to discover any of Christ’s teachings that advocate the destruction of any enemy, white or nonwhite, or that we are to hold grudges and hatred in our hearts for all of our lives.

OREN M. SPIEGLER

Upper Saint Clair, Pa.

Oliver Stone’s hyperbole

The article “Stone on Bush” (Taking names, Monday) leads me to conclude the following about Oliver Stone: once a left-wing loon, always a loon.

Mr. Stone is known to come to his film projects with a hard-left lean, but I had cautiously hoped that his upcoming film about President Bush titled simply “W” would be a fair presentation because his public relations people have made a huge effort to convince the public that Mr. Stone would be “objective.” Thus we looked forward to a movie based on fact, not fiction. But Mr. Stone’s DNA exposed him for what he is when he pondered aloud to Daily Variety, “a fair, true portrait of the man. How did Bush go from being an alcoholic bum to the most powerful figure in the world?”

Objectivity would dictate that Mr. Stone should have said something like “how did Bush go from struggling with alcohol to the most powerful figure in the world?” But alcoholic bum? Hyperbole at its worst, surely loony-left blathering.

I’ve known the president for 40 years, since he was 22, fresh out of Yale, working for us in the successful 1968 Senate campaign of Edward J. Gurney, a Republican from Florida. Yes, I’ve seen him with a drink in his hand and a cigarette in the other. But “alcoholic bum” he clearly was not.

Mr. Bush may have struggled with alcohol, but he is to be admired and commended for coming to grips with it, and stopping July 7, 1986, the day after his 40th birthday.

Mr. Stone’s reference to “alcoholic bum” is an insult to every person with this disease. One of my sons has struggled with alcohol for more than 12 years, and he’s a proud sponsor of so many others in the Alcoholics Anonymous program.

JIM MARTIN

President

60 Plus Association

Arlington, Va.

She did the right thing

The tragic drowning deaths of three young children in Baltimore point to the serious consequences when domestic abuse issues are not considered carefully and completely (“Police: Father drowned children,” Metropolitan, Tuesday). Signs and symptoms usually manifest themselves early on, and they should not be ignored.

In this case, red flags were raised from the start. When Dr. Amy Castillo sought a protective order against her husband, Mark, she relayed the fact that he had a diagnosis of mental problems, had been previously committed to a psychiatric institution and had stated he could kill the children.

Dr. Castillo made all the right moves. It is critical, in a case of this nature, to conduct a lethality assessment and determine the risk factors that may come into play. Major red flags were raised, and they went unheeded.

Unfortunately, Dr. Castillo was only able to obtain a temporary protective order. The request for a final order was denied by the judge who indicated there was “no clear or convincing evidence that the alleged acts of abuse occurred.”

The predictors were there the threats, the behavior and the medical diagnoses. Dr. Castillo recognized the risks and followed legal procedures to obtain the assistance she so vitally needed. Instead, what she got was what she feared most a dreadful consequence: the horrible death of her three children.

KAREN L. BUNE

Adjunct professor of victimology

George Mason University

Fairfax, Va.

The flawed concept of supremacy

Graham Allison’s logic in “Preventing a nuclear terrorist attack” (Commentary, Sunday) demonstrates the flawed perspective of most “experts” who tend to view problems through a limited area of expertise.

His analysis of the nuclear terrorist “threat” is accurate, but his “Doctrine of Three Nos” is lethally flawed. Stopping such an attack won’t “prevent” even larger death tolls likely to result from our global implementation of his doctrine.

Stopping Iran (or any other determined independent nation exercising its rights of national sovereignty) from developing nuclear capabilities will eventually require military force. Any such act of war will have unpredictable consequences. Retaliation by Iran or any other pre-empted nation could take the lives of tens of millions of Americans if they used biological weapons. Or they could reduce us to Third World economic-starvation conditions by targeting our satellites or oil supply using cyber, chemical or even conventional weapons.

Essentially, there can be no security for anyone if some believe they can arm themselves to the teeth and assuredly prevent others from doing the same. This is not a new reality. Emery Reves, author of “The Anatomy of Peace,” detailed this fact nearly 60 years ago when he wrote, “Once the mechanics and the fundamental causes of wars of all wars are realized, the futility and childishness of the passionate debates about armament and disarmament must be apparent to all. If human society were organized so that relations between groups and units in contact were regulated by democratically controlled law and legal institutions, then modern science could go ahead, devise and produce the most devastating weapons, and there would be no war. But if we allow sovereign rights to reside in the separate units and groups without regulating their relations by law, then we can prohibit every weapon, even a penknife, and people will beat out each other’s brains with clubs.”

We could likely “prevent” a million Americans from being incinerated by a nuclear attack. However, the ultimate price we pay in American lives, dollars and essential, inalienable freedoms will be far more costly. The only sane path requires abandoning the flawed concept of the supremacy of national sovereignty, not trying to abolish some weapons for some groups.

CHUCK WOOLERY

Rockville, Md.