Spy Plane Crew

* Re “National Interests, First; Soldiers’ Lives, Second,” Commentary, April 29: James Zumwalt suggests that the crewmen of the EP-3 should have been willing to sacrifice their lives rather than land on the Chinese island of Hainan and give up their electronic spy equipment. I wholeheartedly concur. If they didn’t have the guts to crash into the Pacific, they should have, at least, had the decency to take cyanide pills. (I am sure the lieutenant colonel would have given them some of his.)

JOE LENIHAN

Los Angeles

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* I hope every young person of military-service age reads Zumwalt’s commentary. That is the kind of mentality that is willing to send young lives to their death even for misguided and reckless foreign policies. Furthermore, history is replete with stories of mid-level officers like Zumwalt who are anxious for sacrifice in the name of honor and country--as along as it’s someone else doing the dying.

MARTIN OSTRYE

South Pasadena