LETTERS

Ayn Rand struck again

Tim Griffin equals Atlas Shrugged. MIKE BROWN Redfield

Brought back memory

A while back, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette ran an item written by Paul Greenberg about his visit to Archer City, a small town in Texas.

The piece awakened an old memory of a story my wife Helen told me. Helen and her family lived in Archer City during the early 1930s. Her father was a supervisor of a crew of oilfield workers. Money was as scarce as hair on a frog. A longtime friend and neighbor was out of work, so every payday Helen’s father would split his meager payment with this family.

One Sunday while returning from church, Helen and her sister Jean saw some children standing outside the local drugstore eating icecream cones. They begged their father to get them an ice cream cone, too. He told them that he had no money and could not buy them any ice cream.

Helen and Jean continued to beg for ice cream but their father continued to explain that he had no money. Not accepting defeat, the girls then asked if they could at least drive around the corner and watch the other children enjoy their ice cream. Their father took one look at the disappointment on their faces, got out of the car, borrowed 10 cents from someone and bought the girls an ice cream cone.

WILL PLATE Jacksonville Someone missed class

Could someone tell our U.S. president (dumb), senators (dumber) and representatives (dumbest) the first rule in accounting?

If your outgo exceeds your in

come, your upkeep will be your

downfall.

KEN TIPTON Bigelow

Wait, what about …

Quick question. Given the president’s position on the name of the Washington Redskins and the appropriateness of American Indian references in the naming of sports teams, when is he going to direct the Defense Department to change the names of the Blackhawk and Apache helicopters?

Just saying.

SARA LANGSTON North Little Rock

Probably for the best

Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai says his country may want all U.S. troops out by the end of 2014.

If so, it’s probably for the best. Afghans seem to hate us as much as Iraqis do for invading their countries. A poll several years ago by our own State Department showed that a strong majority of the Iraqis didn’t want us there.

In Afghanistan an estimated 85 percent of the people are illiterate and the Afghan army seemingly prefers to kill U.S. troops rather than the Taliban. Why? Because at least the Taliban belong there and foreign troops don’t.

Karzai has acknowledged that his government is weak and ineffective but says even that is the fault of the U.S. He blames government corruption on the hundreds of millions of dollars the U.S. has thrown around to buy loyalties, submissiveness of government officials to our policies, blind no-bid contracts and reported monthly deliveries of cash to his office by CIA operatives.

The Afghan president wants us to guarantee that nation’s security, which could necessitate sending troops into nearby Pakistan to look for al-Qaida. Pakistan, at least on paper, is a U.S. ally. It’s also nuclear-armed and likely wouldn’t want U.S. troops there.

Karzai also wants our secret intelligence and a guarantee that we will let his troops search for al-Qaida in Afghanistan.

The best that could happen, I believe, is for President Barack Obama to stick by the original agreement and have all troops home by Christmas of 2014. And then Afghans could continue killing each other just as they have done for hundreds of years.

VERNON McDANIEL Ozark

A future that’s bleak

I believe it’s okay for the rich to pay more taxes, but I believe the poor should pay something too because everybody needs to have “skin” in the game.

I believe Democrats are intent on spending this country into bankruptcy while Republicans tried to hold the line during the shutdown. They failed and we will too … eventually. The debt limit has been raised until February, but nobody ever said what that limit is while spending $2 million a minute (about 40 percent borrowed). If you think the past few weeks were calamitous, wait until nobody will help us because we’re broke.

I believe our president has shown himself to be an ideologue, a divider and dictator, but not a leader, and will go down as the worst, if not the last, president in the history of the United States. And though it may have been possible to survive his presidency, it can’t happen with a prevailing mindset that favors emotion to logic. God help us.

BOB STROUD Jacksonville

Didn’t have to happen

It seems to me that there would have been no health-care crisis if the billions (or is it trillions of dollars?) given to other countries had been used to help America first.

What do families do? They help their family members first. Are American citizens not members of the United States of America family?

There is a lot of empty rhetoric of helping the poor in America, but it appears that it is only that-rhetoric and no plans for what has been very apparent for too many years.

PAM MILLS Little Rock

Just as anti-American

I’m not sure what the whole point of Sheldon Richman’s recent pieces on Iran was, but he failed to acknowledge that the Iranian government is believed to have been supplying the IEDs that have been killing American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I hope I never have to read another piece Richman has written. I like fact-based and unbiased articles.

Please Mr. Richman, do your homework next time so you won’t embarrass yourself. Anyone defending the Iranian government, in my opinion, is as anti-American as the Iranian government is.

HOOSHANG NAZARALI Elkins