Bequeath a Better World to Our Children

Re “The Erosion of Civilization” (Opinion, June 15) and “A Plan to Ban Nukes” (Commentary, June 22): We are a nation of robbers. Our defiance of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty denies our children a future of peace. We steal from our children to accommodate our lavish lifestyles, denying them the resources they will need for their own families. We worship gilded things in place of nature, leaving a soiled, polluted planet.

And we rob other countries of their resources and their labor so that we might have more than any other nation in the world. George W. Bush and his administration have disowned our children by overturning some of our most important environmental regulations and by proffering war as an alternative to negotiation. And he has disendowed them in the process, leaving them with one of the biggest deficits in history. No future worthy of our children can come from this administration.

Nancy Knipe

Studio City

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Let’s see if I understand the proposition by Robert McNamara to ban nukes: We disarm or eliminate our nuclear weapons. We rely on the U.N. Security Council to enforce the nuclear weapons ban on the likes of Iran and North Korea through inspectors and, ultimately, military action. The childlike faith by McNamara in the ability of the Security Council to act, in view of the experiences of Bosnia, Kosovo and Iraq, is touching. McNamara probably also believes in the Tooth Fairy.

George Paulikas

Palos Verdes Estates