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Bush Appeals to the ‘Irrelevant’ United Nations for Help With Iraq

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Re “Bush Urges Leaders to Unite for Iraq’s Sake,” Sept. 24: We’ve all encountered the occasional nasty beggar, a fellow who insults you while demanding that you give him your change. It can be understood that someone living on the streets may not quite realize that he is not going about getting his needs met in the most logical or effective manner. But when the occupant of the White House goes to the United Nations, an organization he recently described as “irrelevant,” and -- failing to take responsibility for the dreadful and inevitable results of his “go it alone” preemptive-war policy -- attempts to alternatively bully and shame member nations into rushing to his aid, one can only wonder whether our president even realizes that he has his hand out.

Ronald Rubin

Topanga

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President Bush has already eaten the dove. Now it’s time for him to eat crow. Bon appetit!

Ardis Dahl

Inglewood

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Why does the Republican administration continue to take the American people for a bunch of fools? L. Paul Bremer III, the top U.S. administrator in Iraq, compares his spending plan for rebuilding Iraq to the Marshall Plan, which rescued Europe in 1948-52 (Sept. 23). The Marshall Plan spent $13 billion (that is about $100 billion in today’s dollars) over a stated limit of a four-year period. The Marshall Plan money went to 16 nations and benefited 270 million people, including at least 12 of our wartime allies. We will now pour hundreds of billions of dollars into a single country of 26 million people, most of whom resent our presence there and some of whom are killing and maiming American, British and U.N. personnel.

The purpose of the Marshall Plan was to make the devastated European economies viable again and to give the European people the means to reconstruct their own countries. In Iraq, American and a few other foreign interests are doing the investing and rebuilding rather than the Iraqis themselves. Just imagine what all that money could do for creating jobs, improving schools and cleaning air and water in our nation. What a farce!

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Matt Schwartz

Laguna Woods

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How much good has the West done by implanting Israel’s so-called democracy in the heart of the Arab world? Will forcing democracy on Iraq be any more beneficial?

Marjorie J. Dye

Pasadena

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