Mail Call: Debating Hillary

Being a fortysomething woman, I'm resentful of the fact that I'm expected to be a Hillary supporter. I'd like to think that I can vote for the candidate with whom I most agree, not the one whose gender matches mine. Instead of lamenting that the twentysomething daughters of boomer women are for Obama, why not applaud the fact that these women, whom we have raised to think for themselves, are doing just that?
Jacqueline Duckworth
Fairhaven, Massachusetts

I am an older white female who has believed for many years that a woman president would lead this country and the world in a different direction. Hillary Clinton, however, is the embodiment of everything that is wrong with our political system. Granted, she is tough, a fighter and will do anything to get elected. But once she is in office, not much would change. We need a leader who has the character, intellect, vision and temperament to tackle our tremendous problems. A leader who can bring opposing interest groups together and attract the best minds to find solutions. I have experienced firsthand in South Carolina how Obama's message resonates across race, gender, age and class. I am for him not because he is black but because he will make change possible. This race is not about gender or race, but about old politics versus a new way of thinking.
Gaby Kloiber
Bluffton, South Carolina

Reaching Out to Hamas?
News of an Islamic terrorist's shooting of eight defenseless teenagers while they were studying in the school library was reported blandly as "eight people" and rated a mere 11 words in your full-page article about Hamas ("Talking to the Enemy," March 17). Your description of Islamists firing "a few well-placed rockets" belies the fact that hundreds of Kassam rockets target the city of Sderot daily, killing civilians and traumatizing children who have a 15-second warning to run for cover. Compare this cold-blooded reporting with your sympathetic descriptions of the people of Gaza who support Hamas, and it is no wonder that "international public opinion [has] turned sharply critical [of Israel]." Your few well-placed nouns and adjectives are part of the problem.
Judith Shapiro
Hod Hasharon, Israel

Now that Shlomo Brom, former Israeli military chief of strategic planning, has arrived at the earth-shattering conclusion that Hamas is "not going to disappear" as "they're a national political movement," one has to wonder at the level of competence, intelligence and reason that pertains within the Israeli military. Given this example, is it any wonder that the conflict escalates and the hatred increases by the day and the funerals by the week?
S. M. Halpern
Westbourne, England

Israel withdrew from Gaza to further the "peace process." In return for this land-for-peace gesture, Israel received anything but peace: it was rewarded by seeing former Jewish towns, villages and synagogues turned into Palestinian terrorist-training camps and platforms from which to launch missiles and mortars into Israel. While many thousands of such missiles were landing on Israeli civilian areas, traumatizing children and wounding and killing innocent people, the international community and media were largely silent. Now that the Israeli military has responded against Palestinian rocket and mortar crews, the international community and media have broken their silence, since Palestinian civilians are sadly and inevitably becoming victims. Inevitable because groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad are deliberately using civilian areas and human shields to launch their attacks upon Israel, knowing full well that any military response may result in civilian casualties for which the world will vilify the Israeli side. This is a well-worn route that continues to pay dividends for the terrorists and their agenda of eradicating the Jewish state.
D. Roberts
Tredegar, England

Europe, Making Itself Heard?
Timothy Garton Ash makes the kind of error in his article "The Crisis in the West" (Issues 2008) that is typically seen among U.S. neoconservatives: a refusal to accept the answers given to questions proposed. For instance, he says: "If Europe wants collective action on climate change, it should figure out how to make it happen." Excuse me? The European answer to this question is crystal clear; what does Ash want Europe to do to bring the United States up to speed? Should Europe attempt to threaten the United States to comply? Would such an answer be heard? What was the U.S. answer in Kyoto or Bali? The truth is, the United States did not respond to the rest of the world. Instead, it stalled multilateral progress. Similarly, why was weapons inspector Hans Blix not allowed to complete his work in Iraq? Because the U.S. government would not accept the answer to the question "Does Iraq have weapons of mass destruction?" The European answer to bad relations between the Middle East and the West is also crystal clear: solve the Israel-Palestine conflict and everything else will become much easier. Why does the United States continue to support Israel, even when Israel does not live up to its responsibilities to ensure peace, as has happened again and again? The real question that Ash should be asking is this: when will the United States begin listening to reason? If the United States does not, it could entail a fatal crisis between Europe and the States, one unlikely to be overcome for many years.
Halfdan Abrahamsen
Aarhus, Denmark

A Coal Miner's Life in China
In your Dec. 17, 2007, Periscope item "Panda Lovers Love Coal," you reported that the World Wildlife Fund's climate-change-program head in Hong Kong believes that coal should continue to be used over the next three decades. Experts on the environment will be able to evaluate the cost of this to the region's already failing air quality. I would like to draw attention to the human cost. In China, thousands of coal miners die in horrific underground accidents each year. Many more are maimed or permanently incapacitated while undertaking their daily unhealthy work. Legions of other miners will live a shortened life only to die a painful death as a result of lung diseases, such as emphysema, contracted in the mines. Few of these miners have any alternative employment options, and their wages are very low in comparison with the remuneration deemed appropriate to other dangerous jobs, such as those of oil-rig workers. Nor, sadly, are their bereaved relatives generously looked after. Clearly, China's rapid industrialization comes at a great human cost, and it is China's miners who pay that price. While large sums are spent on preserving the panda and other animal species, thousands of Chinese miners meet their deaths at work each year, after short and unenviable lives. Those situated in comfortable Hong Kong offices may be cocooned from this unpleasant truth. Are we spending more on protecting some endangered species of animal while ignoring the degradation of human life, which every coal miner knows all too well? It is high time that nonmined sources of energy were developed—not only for obvious environmental reasons, but also to save future generations of Chinese miners. One would have thought that the World Wildlife Fund would have been the first to say so.
Paul Surtees
Hong Kong

© 2008