LETTERS

LITTLE ROCK — McChrystal’s future bright

I hate to see the armed forces lose great leaders because they are so scarce.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s future outside the military will certainly be bright. After Col. Billy Mitchell issued a statement accusing senior leaders in the Army and Navy of incompetence and “almost treasonable administration of the national defense,” he was court-martialed at the direct order of President Calvin Coolidge.

Public opinion stood with Mitchell, and Eddie Rickenbacker, Hap Arnold, Carl Spaatz and Fiorello LaGuardia testified on his behalf. When the president is at odds with a military officer, it takes real character and courage to stand with the officer. The court was lenient, but stripped Mitchell of his pay and suspended him from active duty for five years.

Mitchell’s recognition and rewards would not come until after his death at age 57. He was promoted to major general and commemorated with a U.S. postage stamp. He was honored with a Congressional Gold Medal, and President Franklin Roosevelt petitioned Congress to award him the Medal of Honor. The Air Force Association named its Institute for Air Power Studies after him.

In 2007, the Air Force began awarding combat action medals that are based on the insignia painted on Mitchell’s own aircraft during World War I. It is unfortunate that so many are unappreciated while they live.

GENE McVAY Fort SmithSummertime reading

Re the feature in a recent Perspective section, “Hidden history of evil,” by Claire Berlinski about the world’s indifference to the “deadliest ideology in history,” the systematic death of 150 million citizens of the Soviet Union by the communist government: I am reading a new novel, “The Stalin Epigram,” by Robert Littell concerning writers Boris Pasternak, Osip Mandelstam and their friends. Most of the action takes place in the early 1930s, particularly 1934. Mandelstam has written the short epigram that has alarmed fellow artists who beg him to suppress it.

This is a good time of year to read this well-written novel. It will chill your blood.

ANNE FULK Little RockThink of the future

Given the revelations of testimony and magazine articles concerning the out-of-control oil well, how many of us readers will continue to believe a corporate CEO when he states that we should trust him as he knows what he is doing?

An article in the June Rolling Stone documents appalling failure on President Obama’s part for failing to clean house at the U.S. Minerals Management Service as soon as he became president, and on the previous president, George W. Bush, for developing and fostering a “head in the sand, trust them” mentality.

Oil is too valuable to use up without thinking of the future generations that will need it. It is high time to get serious about replacing oil with natural gas in automobile and truck transportation. High-speed electric trains should be developed for taking the place of short-haul airline flights, and electric-powered trains should be used to haul freight. Intense development of wind power can supply the electricity needed. Surplus electricity can be used to make hydrogen for fuel cell-generated electricity for thosefew days the wind does not blow.

Get off the fence and build the electric transmission lines from the Western states to the Coastal states. Oil-based jet fuel will continue to be needed for flights. If the country keeps on doing the same thing, it will get the same results, including sending money to Muslim countries to fund terrorists who would just as soon kill all of us.

DALE GOSSIEN Little Rock Goodbye, free press

Goodbye, free press. At the behest of the Obama administration, the Federal Trade Commission has penned adraft policy paper on “the reinvention of journalism.” I offer a synopsis.

Pages 5-6 discuss copyright, antitrust and direct and indirect government funding. Potential revenue sources include additional intellectual rights to support “claims against news aggregators.”

Page 12 says that “some suggest that some sort of industry-wide licensing arrangement be adopted with the government’s help and support.” and notes that foreign governments are exploring “the creation of government-fostered pilot programs to investigate new business models for IP and discourage free-riding.”

Pages 17-19 list new programs and disbursements to AmeriCorps, a national fund for local news, tax credits to news organizations for each journalist hired, “citizenship news vouchers,” grants to universities, Small Business Administration loans, loans to non-profit news organizations, and increased postal subsidies to newspapers and periodicals.

If this sounds like censorship to you, congratulations, you are paying attention. Friends and neighbors, if we prefer our news unfiltered and less than perfect, we must do whatever is in our powers to prevent this from happening. Contact your representatives in Washington to voice your objections.

WANDA MORRIS Conway Job at hand ignored

With unemployment hovering around 10 percent and a moratorium on oil drilling in the Gulf, Barack Obama relaxes with concerts, state dinners and playing rounds of golf.

As the oil continues to gush, tar balls and oil wash up on beaches all along the Gulf Coast. Anger mounts as thousands more enter the ranks of the unemployed.

Meanwhile, Obama’s Justice Department takes aim at Arizona’s immigration law as the Department of the Interior seeks to circumvent a judge’s order to lift the moratorium on drilling.

It’s clear that Obama’s focus isn’t on the Gulf, jobs and unemployment, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, debt deficits and the economy, but on advancing a political agenda that weakens America and destroys our way of life.

GENE FULCHER BentonFeedback One job well done

I’m certainly glad the smoke police are out patrolling. That’s a job well done out there in Sherwood by one of the local safety patrol.

It’s amazing that the fastest growing childhood disease is caused by food and not cigarettes. It’s also amazing that people are dying every day by the thousands from what they eat or overeat.

The letter writer from Sherwood put me in mind of the woman and her husband a couple of years ago who were whining (on TV, no less) about smokers at Riverfest. Both of them were grossly overweight and they were whining about secondhand smoke.

Some of these smoke police need to start patrolling the fastfood joints and school cafeterias. They’ll be so self-satisfied and smug about how they saved so many people, they’ll forget all about the smokers.

I do my best to be respectful about where I smoke, and I feel like a hard year in Vietnam gave me the right to have my own little space outdoors. How’d he earn his space? Just by bein’ here?

If I’m in my car like that teacher, that’s my privilege. The letter writer should quit looking for things to whine about and start helping educate people about diabetes. But that requires effort and compassion, don’t it?

PHILLIP FREEMAN Benton