Sirhan’s Feelings of Frustration

I had a good chuckle over Sirhan B. Sirhan’s feelings of frustration after 18 years of prison life. (Times, May 29). He was “dumbfounded,” “speechless,” and “shocked,” that he was denied parole for another two years.

Sirhan always admitted to the killing of Robert F. Kennedy and now wants to be set free to be “out of your hair.” Actually, I don’t mind paying taxes to cover his room and board bill at Soledad prison. He portrays himself as a victim, but he is no less a victim than the man he murdered.

Sirhan didn’t perpetrate any “normal” killing. Oh, no. What he did was change the course of human events. Whether Kennedy had been elected President or not, his pressure and presence would have insured an earlier exit from Vietnam. Thousands of lives and untold heartache and destruction would have been avoided. With a Kennedy-Nixon contest in 1968, the events that led to Watergate in 1972 wouldn’t have occurred. Chances are that we would even have a different President today.

To ever release Sirhan is to insult every man, woman, and child who lived, fought, or died in Vietnam. To let Sirhan walk into the “woodwork somewhere in the Middle East” is to subvert any justice that history and the people of our country deserve.

Sirhan said, “The American system of justice will let me go home in a coffin. I’m abandoning hope.” Still, he’s better off than being in some places of the Middle East; he would have filled that coffin long ago.

This June is the 19th year since Robert Kennedy was murdered.

PETER STEKEL

Wrightwood