Yellow Ribbons and a Symbolic Vote on Iraq

Re “Town Finds Skater Out of Line,” April 15: I am against war, any war, including the one that’s winding down in Iraq. I am confused as to how to show my sentiments now. I am not skating down a street and cutting off yellow ribbons or ripping off American flags because other people have a right to express their views, and I don’t think expressing support for our troops is being pro-war. I am placing a light in my window nightly, though I’m not sure how many people walking by know what I mean by it.

I am distraught about the homeless shelters closing because of a shortage of funds (April 15-16); there must be a connection between how much tax money we’re spending on that war and our unmet needs here at home. I am most concerned about our leaders’ obsession with bringing all the “evil” people or countries in the world in line, and I hope that we don’t just keep marching into more bloodshed.

“Victory” (even if this was a predictable one) has a way of going to one’s head. I wonder if we’re losing ours.

Christa Metzger

Santa Monica

*

I’m all for supporting our troops, but do we really have to be reminded of that stupid Tony Orlando song every time we go to war?

Ken MacLeod

Simi Valley

*

Re “UCLA Faculty Group Votes to Protest War,” April 15:

Sociology professor Maurice Zeitlin and UCLA’s esteemed academic senate provide a perfect illustration of how readily certain “thinkers” embrace negative views of the U.S. -- going so far as to suggest the dawn of American imperialism. How telling that he and the academic senate perceive the United Nations to be the foremost authority on implementing free, constitutional representative government and not the United States. Then again, maybe Zeitlin and company have more in common with the U.N. than the U.S. anyway. Those who can, do. Those who can’t, sit around and think (and pass resolutions).

Douglas Reinart

Manhattan Beach

*

The UCLA faculty resolution is timely in that this action in Iraq is not the end but merely the beginning of a systematic effort on the part of the neoconservatives in power to “reform” the world in the image and likeness of American democracy.

I look for increasingly tough talk toward other Middle Eastern countries, with Syria being next. More saber rattling and whacking of hornets’ nests, more sanctions on the part of the U.S., more shifting of goal posts in Washington’s foreign and domestic “dialogue” and, when the domestic populace is sufficiently incensed, another military action down the road.

Hegemony is the name of the U.S. game.

Christina Waldeck

Torrance