Letters

Bush tax cut ensures more personal freedom

In his March 2 opinion piece "Irresponsible budget," Michael O'Hanlon overlooks a very important point: Cutting individuals' income taxes is the best way to give them true control over their money and ultimately their personal lives. President Bush's tax plan is the most responsible way to ensure that Americans have more healthcare choices. Under his plan, Americans will have more disposable income to pay privately for healthcare providers and treatments.

If we continue to build up and rely on a massive Medicare program that traps all American seniors into a single government healthcare system, our choices and privacy will continue to diminish.

It is well known that "he who pays the piper calls the tune." Mr. Bush's tax plan helps ensure that individual Americans will be calling more tunes when it comes to health affairs.

Sue A. Blevins Washington Institute for Health Freedom

NATO has ignored KLA aggression

Regarding your March 5 article "Kosovo unrest crosses border": The havoc recently wreaked on a busload of Serbs and the Kosovo Liberation Army's (KLA) forays out of Kosovo into Macedonia are the unfortunate consequences of NATO having bequeathed a blank check to the KLA.

During 1998, NATO held "Partnership in Peace" exercises with the Albanian Army while willfully ignoring the existence of KLA camps in Albania and the flow of trained men and weaponry from them into Kosovo.

NATO proceeded to make war on Belgrade. This first experiment in humanitarian intervention provoked a humanitarian disaster. Then there was the murderous expulsion of the majority of Kosovo's Serbs, Roma, and other non-Albanians under the noses of occupying NATO-led KFOR troops. The KLA moved over 1,000 heavily armed men from Kosovo into the adjoining five-kilometer-wide demilitarized zone of Serbia proper under the eyes of KFOR.

NATO should get tough with the KLA, but can the world's mightiest military alliance confront its "bodybag" complex and, more importantly, acknowledge its fallibility?

Yugo Kovach Twickenham, England

Bush response to shooting inadequate

I am saddened to hear President Bush's response to the school shooting in California. Mr. Bush called it a "disgraceful act of cowardice." His words mark a man who fundamentally misunderstands the situation. Though his response depicts his "hard-line" stance on crime, it does not address the gravity of the situation or the underlying problem.

While it feels good to point fingers at disgraceful cowards and shame them, school shootings and other violence will flourish as long as we take such a narrow approach.

Todd Heldt Chicago

Faith-based plan will lure black voters

Regarding your March 7 editorial "Bush and the black agenda": Faith-based solutions do solve the real problems confronted by African-Americans. Their implementation by the Bush administration will certainly break the stranglehold the Democrats have on the black vote.

African-American ministers want to take a more active role in addressing such issues as teen pregnancy, AIDS, domestic violence, and homosexuality, and it is sad that all black Democrat members of Congress have voted against laws in support of this.

African-Americans have strong roots in the Christian faith, and it is high time that their leaders and representatives in Congress reflect those values and deal seriously with the real problems confronting African-American families.

Moorad Alexanian Wilmington, N.C.

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(c) Copyright 2001. The Christian Science Monitor

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