Democracy Speaks With More Than One Voice

Re “Biden Musings Trigger GOP Attack,” Oct. 25: The Times gave Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, no less, a pass on his call for lengthy mano-a-mano military conflict (on horseback, maybe?) in Afghanistan, instead of our being viewed as “a high-tech bully.” These “musings” should have been identified as outrageous, even with a scolding editorial.

We don’t need lots of American body bags to protect us against another Sept. 11, or to prove to Bill Maher that we’re not a bunch of cowards, or to stop the rest of the political far left from equating all U.S. military action with some kind of right-wing criminal appetite for Third World civilian deaths.

Let’s be as high-tech as possible with as few innocent casualties as possible on both sides of this war. We’ve already had over 5,000. How many more do we need?

Wayne Bishop

Altadena

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Thank you, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and Rep. Thomas M. Davis (R-Va.), for assisting in the lethal injection of democracy as we know it. Democracy’s fragility has long been recognized, and its inherent potential for disintegration has often been predicted.

In 1814, John Adams said, “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”

In 1966, Sen. J. William Fulbright said, “In a democracy dissent is an act of faith. Like medicine, the test of its value is not in its taste, but its effects.”

Hastert and Davies and their unenlightened ilk are hastening its destruction. It is not surprising that those who demean, dismiss and denigrate government neither cherish nor comprehend it.

William C. George

San Diego