Economic Fiction

Re “Lighten War’s Toll on Pakistan,” Commentary, Nov. 1: Now let me see if I have this straight. According to former Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, at a time when our country is entering a recession and America’s textile industry is laying off tens of thousands of garment workers, including in New York City, we should lift the tariffs on goods manufactured in the sweatshops of Pakistan, the country that helped create the Taliban, whose citizens are rallying to its defense and that apparently cannot even safeguard its own nuclear weapons. Cohen should write fiction. Or maybe this was.

Al Meyerhoff

Los Angeles