We’d feel differently about war if we were all invested

We’d feel differently about war if we were all invested

EDITOR:

Last Sunday, our son John sent an e-mail that he was catching a helicopter to Garmisir, further south in Helmand Province. Early Monday morning his mom and I heard on the radio that three copters had gone down in Afghanistan with nearly a dozen killed. We checked our e-mail and John had written at 5:22 a.m. that he was at a forward operations base where 400 Marines serve.

We went on our morning walk feeling a lot better than we would have had we not received that message. However, as I walked I couldn’t help thinking that at that moment there were families by-the-tens-of-thousands who had heard nothing and were feeling terrible. And there would be a dozen or more families getting terrible news about a loved one that will change their lives forever. For years this has been going on — for hundreds of thousands of fellow citizens — without my day being disturbed. This is not right. I have not felt so sad and helpless since a close friend’s brother was killed in Vietnam. Either we’re all in it, or none of us should be.

For a number of good reasons I have long believed that we should never have ended the draft, that we should have a universal service requirement. Beginning now I will no longer support a politician or political party that does not support reinstatement of a national draft, a draft with no exemptions. If a young American feels he or she cannot carry a weapon, fine, they can serve in many other ways such as in the medical corps or as civilians presently do in “nation building” projects.

Politicians and generals have said they oppose the draft because our volunteer army is better. Maybe that’s so. Maybe our army would not fight as well. But it would not fight as often, either. We have gone into far too many wars in recent decades because the general public does not have to pay attention — we’re told to just go shopping. This is not right. When all Americans have to pay attention like I did last week, our government will make better decisions as to how we pursue foreign relations.

JOHN WENDLE

Youngstown

X The writer’s son recently began a year of service with a nongovernmental organization in Afghanistan.

Seeing shades of gray in plight of Delphi retirees

EDITOR:

I have ambivalent feelings about the state of affairs of retired Delphi employees. It is blatantly unfair that former salaried employees of Delphi are losing retirement benefits. Many of them undoubtedly chose to stay at Delphi because of the company’s promise to take care of them for the rest of their lives. Some were encouraged to retire after 30 years of service with the promise that the company would pay them near full pension benefits while providing full medical insurance coverage. Who among us would not accept this offer to retire when we were in our late 40s or 50s? Delphi’s bankruptcy subsequently negated these promises. This tragedy involves two losses, pension income and medical insurance.

As far as the loss of pension income is concerned, it is patently unfair to use the tax money paid by those who must work until 66 years of age to subsidize the incomes of those who have retired as much as 15 years earlier. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. will mitigate the loss of pension income for many, if not most, retirees. For those so young that the PBGC pension payments will be too little on which to live, we should provide job placement services and/or job training, as well as provide some limited form of temporary unemployment compensation.

The loss of medical insurance is different because of the absurd state of health care in our country, especially regarding non-insurable pre-existing conditions. Fairness dictates that all Delphi retirees younger than 65 should be provided medical insurance (a version of Medicare or Medicaid?) at a reasonable cost until they can find employment that will provide medical insurance. For those old enough to qualify for Medicare, they would join the rest of us in paying for Supplemental Medicare Insurance.

Former Delphi employees are not the only victims of bankruptcy. Two of my customers (both were Delphi Packard suppliers) have gone out of business in the last three years while owing me a substantial amount of money. Fair? No. Should the taxpayer compensate me for my loss? Absolutely not. One of the fallacies that we have been led to believe is that the government can and should fix everything. Sometimes, as truly awful as it is, stuff just happens.

ROBERT F. MOLLIC

Liberty Township

Government can’t do it all

EDITOR:

I think we have two huge problems in all levels of our government. First, we have too many people working for the government. Second, we have too many people on some sort of government entitlement program. Our society has become one large circle of 300 million people with everyone’s hand in the next person’s pocket.

We in the very competitive private sector cannot continue to support all of the people feeding at the public trough. We in the private sector who bail the government out every minute of every day can’t continue at this pace much longer. It is no wonder our jobs are vanishing. When the private sector built a relative Utopia (compared to the rest of the world) we expected the government to keep peace and leave us alone. We built a strong entrepreneurial culture with solid family values. We understand that the government couldn’t give us anything without stealing from someone else. Today’s philosophy is that of the government playing the role of the nanny and providing everything. The fallacy of that thinking is the government produces no goods or services that cannot be done better and cheaper by the private sector. The government can only increase the taxes on those producers.

I am a Libertarian and I fear if the Republicans and Democrats don’t stop drowning us in red ink we are going to back ourselves into the Third World.

TIMOTHY McNEIL

Mineral Ridge