Is Afghan Suffering Beside the Point?

On Oct. 17 your front page featured the headline “Relief Efforts Trumped by Air War,” followed by “Helping Afghans was already a challenge. U.S. military campaign makes it a nightmare.” The story included our bombing of a Red Cross aid warehouse, the dropping of absurdly insufficient food packets into minefields and the drastic slowing of the aid workers’ and refugees’ race against winter.

The story continues on A18. In the lower right corner of that page, below the words and photos of suffering, is another headline, “President Praises Children for Giving to Afghan Relief,” with a brief article about his appeal to American youth to send a dollar each. It ends with his words, “Everybody can make a contribution in the war against evildoers. Helping a child in Afghanistan is a very important contribution.”

Is it just me or is there something terribly wrong with this juxtaposition? Some said irony died on Sept. 11. I fear it will outlive many innocents who will soon die in our names and in the names of those American children.

Terry McNally

Los Angeles

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I strongly object to the reports you give of misfortunes in Afghanistan following our bombing. If we showed the misfortunes suffered by the Japanese and Germans in World War II we would have lost the war. In Vietnam the published photo of the naked child was most instrumental in our losing the war. Please show more patriotic discrimination. We are on the side of right, not equally that of evil.

Jerome Greenblatt

Laguna Woods