Prudence is the key word in dealing with the Middle East

Prudence is the key word in dealing with the Middle East
EDITOR:
Congressman Tim Ryan is due praise for his recent trips to China and Israel, as these two nations are so crucial to future developments in which Rep. Ryan, given his youth and apparent potential, may well play an important role.
However, I am a little troubled by the trip to Israel and his subsequent glowing comments on that nation's technological prowess and how the Valley could possibly profit from this via the local business incubator.
I know from comments made a year or so ago at a Youngstown Unitarian Church forum by Rep. Ted Strickland that Ryan harbors some doubts concerning the Israel situation. Strickland said that he and Ryan once had a heated debate over the wall being built by Israel to separate the nation from the Palestinian area.
Ryan, Strickland said, had more reservations about the wall than did he. I do hope that Ryan continues to be somewhat wary of unstinting support for Israel's policies, given the volatility of the issue to the Muslim world. I doubt that even Vice President Dick Cheney would deny that the Israel-Palestine issue was a motivating factor to those responsible for 9/11.
Recently, a PBS documentary was broadcast on the climbing of Alaska's Mt. McKinley, also known by its Native American name, Denali. The program portrayed the ascent of this 20,320-foot peak as one of the severest tests of mountaineering in the world, where bodies of its past victims still lie on the slopes.
I was reminded of a famous photo of a weather-beaten Robert F. Kennedy and his climbing party standing on frigid summit of this peak which was, I believe, taken not too long before his effort to win the Democratic presidential primary.
Here was a man who took on the mob as U.S. attorney general and whose heroism even extended to conquering a mountain of legendary cruelty to climbers.
Yet Bobby Kennedy was senselessly gunned down in Los Angeles‚ Ambassador Hotel that fateful June 1968 evening on the cusp of winning his party's nomination for president. The assassin was Sirhan Sirhan an Arab incensed by RFK's support for giving F-16 fighter jets to Israel.
What followed, of course, was the presidency of Richard Nixon and the continuation of the Vietnam War which ultimately cost the lives of 58,000 members of our armed forces.
Would the continued calamity of Vietnam have followed if RFK had been elected president? This I doubt. Could it thus be argued that the continuation of the Vietnam War was the result of RFK's unstinting support for Israel? I believe so.
At any rate, since Israel continues to be very much of a geopolitical hot potato, particularly (and paradoxically) now as Ariel Sharon leaves the limelight, it behooves Ryan to be cautious.
ROBERT R. STANGER
Boardman
Alternative reparations
EDITOR:
This letter is in response to the Jan. 15 letter suggesting reparations to African-Americans. I would like to offer an alternate suggestion.
My great-grandfather, Cpl. Isaac Granger, served three years in the Ohio Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War. He was wounded at the Battle of Stone River, Tenn.
I believe that all living descendants of a Union veteran of the Civil War should be rewarded for those volunteers who suffered and died to do their part to free an oppressed people.
I don't have a detailed method of raising the money as last Sunday's letter suggested, but feel that it should be something simple. I have no idea what a corporal was paid in those days, but based on what a corporal is paid today, compensation for three years would be in the neighborhood of $72,000.
I know that there will be many of you who will say that this suggestion is ridiculous, and I say it's only as ridiculous as the Jan. 15 letter.
RUSS GRANGER
Youngstown