Letters

Offer some solutions

I'm getting so tired of Obama-bashing!

It seems your editorials are tireless in attacking Barack Obama's handling of violence in foreign countries. It's just too easy to attack Obama's actions or lack thereof--I can even do it myself, and often do.

But where is the offering of some sound countermeasures? Surely the editors are capable of stating some.

Why not challenge both Democrats and Republicans for the lack of a clear foreign policy? Why not some criteria for when the U.S. will respond to violence and the need for humanitarian aid that we Americans, our allies and adversaries can understand? I know we cannot box ourselves in by specifically stating what our response will be or when it will be implemented, but real red lines surely could be drawn.

The recent editorial titled "There he goes again/Leading from behind, way behind" (a catchy phrase but a bit overdone) made the point well that our foreign policy is adrift and lacking in appropriate action, but fails to offer any suggestions.

Isn't it reasonable to expect some constructive criticism from our newspapers and our political parties?

RICHARD HARLOW

Bella Vista

On better health care

We have all heard the selfish complaints by people who fear that making health-care coverage available to more Americans will overwhelm the health-care system.

A few years ago, my son was knocked down in a basketball game and we rushed him to the emergency room because we were afraid he had a concussion. Well, after a two-hour wait, we were told to go home and take him to our GP because the ER was overwhelmed with people who did not have health coverage.

The health-care system will always lag the population, but it is critical that the ER is able to handle real emergencies. When you vote, remember that one party is trying to provide health care for as many people as it can, and one party regularly votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act and take us back to a broken system that was out of control with absolutely no plans to repair it.

PAUL WAGENER

Jacksonville

Sound pretty useless

The Little Rock airport plans to buy two electric trucks. According to news reports, the trucks have a top speed of 35 mph and a load capacity of 1,100 pounds. Those "trucks" sound pretty lame to me. They are more like glorified golf carts. They cost $55,000 each, about twice what a real truck would cost.

These vehicles can run for 50 miles on a charge. What is that, two or three hours of usage? Then they require six hours of charging so they must spend twice as much time on the charger as they do on the road.

Do these things sound like efficient, useful trucks to anyone? Or just expensive, useless vehicles purchased as public relations to pacify the radical environmentalists?

FRANK LATIMER

Little Rock

On fanciful histories

The editorial, "The end of Iraq," offers a fanciful history that places the blame for Iraq's disintegration on Barack Obama and his secretaries of State.

Other histories are possible. For example: Christians, Jews, Shia and Sunnis lived in relative peace in the Ottoman Empire until it was defeated in World War I and arbitrarily carved up between England and France to serve Western interests (strategic waterways and oil).

As a war measure, England opened part of the Ottoman Empire to Zionists for a Jewish homeland in Palestine whose fruition required demographic reshuffling: mass immigration of Europeans, plus demonization and expulsion of native Arabs to create a Jewish majority. Zionist expansion in Palestine and Western imperial policies in other Ottoman territories provoked a variety of anti-Western responses, one being the rise of Islamism, the one response that might unite a majority of Ottoman Muslims.

As England and France declined in power after World War II, the United States assumed their role in sustaining the Western world order. Neo-cons in the Bush administration sought to remake Iraq in its own liberal-American image. It destroyed the Baathist state (leader, party, bureaucracy, military, Sunni constituency), and replaced it with an unsustainable Shia state that alienated the Sunnis and Kurds and served Iran's interests.

Given the trajectory of Western expansion in the Middle East since World War I and Muslim resistance to it, blaming the only American president that I believe seems to understand the flaws in Western imperial policies for its failures seems a bit obtuse.

DAVID SIXBEY

Flippin

Learning differently

I am a student attending Ramay Junior High for the first time, and they are already making me hate the school. There is this class called Achieve3000 that I have to take, by law, but it takes away one of my elective classes I want to take like band or basketball, just because I got a low score on the Benchmark. I had pretty good grades though--A's, B's and C's.

Just think of all the kids with reading disabilities or other problems. They may not get any of the classes they choose because they will have to take more reading classes. It may help, but those classes make kids mad and frustrated. These classes do help you get ready for tests, but all tests bring are frustration and headaches. When I'm mad, I tend to just stop and sit there.

These classes might make it easier to learn but they also it make it harder, especially when the teacher says, "You should know this, you have been doing it for years." We know we have been doing this for years; it just makes us upset when you keep saying it because, for some, it makes us feel stupid, not all, but some. For some kids it just doesn't click as easily as it does for others.

I hope you understand what I'm talking about. This is for the kids who can't learn as well as others can. I understand how they feel because I feel the same way.

SALLIE McMAHON

Fayetteville

Editorial on 08/22/2014

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