Letter Response
Dear Editor: I’m writing in response to the food fight letter posted in Wednesday’s Sentinel. Yes, it’s true there are people everywhere that go hungry everyday … including right here in Sitka. However, I think you’ve kind of lost the point here.
The pasta and rice used in said food fight were out-of-date. Grocery stores throw out perfectly good food every day because it’s past the expiration date. If you want to make a difference instead of picking on summer kids program that had fun for kids in mind, what kid doesn’t think that would be fun, let’s focus on how we can take otherwise wasted food and get it to those in need. Or, we’ve all seen this at the dump, the last year’s uneaten fish just thrown away to make room for more this year – that’s an egregious waste of food.
Using your logic, I’ve also wasted plenty of food with my own child. When she was young I put out plenty of beans and rice for her to play with – sensory tables are a great tactical experience for kids and used in daycares and preschools. Is this wrong too? I think your heart is in the right place, but I think you are better served putting your efforts to make a difference and not lambast people/programs who are trying to do positive things for our children.
Carolyn Heuer, Sitka
Malaysia Flight 17
Dear Editor: Calling last week’s shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over the skies of eastern Ukraine “a global tragedy,” President Obama called for a “credible international investigation into what happened,” given that this was “an Asian airliner destroyed in European skies filled with citizens of many countries.” (Sentinel, 18 July.)
One can only wonder how the world might be different today if there had been a “credible international investigation into what happened” on Sept. 11, 2001: a globally launched, coordinated, and conducted (as opposed to White House/Congress-controlled) criminal (as opposed to political) investigation into what actually, really happened that day; how and why it actually, really happened; and who, by their acts of commission and/or omission, actually, really made or enabled it to happen.
Who knows what would have happened, for example, if the Taliban, in response to such an international investigation, had made good their offer to hand over Osama bin Laden to the appropriate authorities if provided with sufficient evidence and proof of his and al-Qaeda’s involvement in the ‘‘Day That Was The End of The World, As We Knew It?’’
Just think, it might have saved the expense of a bunch of SEALS from having to sneak into Pakistan under cover of diplomatic and military daylight to dispatch Mr. Osama bin Ladin off to ‘‘Islamicist paradise’’; let alone 13 years of yet another, lost war by the West (following in the noble traditions of the Brits and Russians) against (and for the good of) the people and nation of Afghanistan.
And, who knows? Without 9-11, even Saddam’s alleged WMDs might not have been enough to sucker the American people into OPERATION IRAQ LIBERATION (or “OIL,” later less blatantly re-christened OPERATION IRAQ FREEDOM). But then, we might have missed W’s “Mission Accomplished” gig.
Then again, maybe not.
Veterans Against War,
Sitka Platoon,
J.G. Moebus, MSG,
U.S. Army, Retired
