Assassination Claimed a Champion of Peace

Re “Former Leader Slain in Beirut,” Feb. 15: You read that a former Lebanese prime minister was killed, but please don’t simply yawn and turn the page. This is sad for all who knew Rafik Hariri, as I did, but a real setback for a larger peace in the region.

Here was a man who just wanted to do good in a region that so many had given up on, and he did. He used his brains, brawn and bankroll to transform Beirut from war-torn to rejuvenated.

Since he had just left office a few months ago, I had such high hopes for him playing a larger transnational role, replicating his plans of giving people a capitalist alternative to fighting, just as he did in Beirut.

Rafik is the man who solved the Lebanon conflicts when no other person or country could, and he did it with capitalism, not fanaticism.

It was Rafik who taught me that you need unfettered resources to solve problems in the region, where he invested over a billion of his own dollars in a country that others had abandoned.

Lebanon, the Middle East and the world lost some hope this week. Let’s pray that someone steps into his shoes.

Tom Patterson

Pacific Palisades

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So the past year, all my lefty friends have been squawking about the American “occupation” (which liberated a people) in Iraq.

Yet I’ve never, ever heard from them one peep about the 22-year Syrian occupation of Lebanon. Come to think of it, they never marched in the streets protesting the 40-year Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe either.

Could it be the agenda of my lefty friends is not to oppose tyranny, but to debase America?

Scott Abramson

San Mateo