Students should pursue
freedom of ideas
I urge all the great students on this campus not to sit quietly and let anti-American ideas be propagated in your classrooms. Your professors can punish you for speaking your mind, especially if you show anger, but a respectful disagreement is the least you can do. America was founded on the ideas that the individuals have rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The government is supposed to secure these rights.
Jack Crawford
Silver Spring, Md.
Drug war has failed
The article by Debenham (“There’s no hope with dope,” ODE, 10/15) has the theme of government propaganda. Please inform the columnist that the drug war is approximately 30 years old, and that it’s one of the most failed social policies ever conceived.
Michael Gailb
New York, N.Y.
Bloodletting won’t
resolve this war
Six months before the Red Army invaded Afghanistan, the CIA pumped some $6 million into the country in support of the right-wing opposition party. The communists eventually responded to this obvious meddling in foreign politics. At that point the CIA amassed some 30,000 religious fanatics, trained them, gave them guns and pointed them at the Reds.
Years later, when the Red Army was defeated, they and the United States left the mess we know as Afghanistan how it remains today. The aftermath of this conflict led to warring among the many factions, but the one that eventually rose to power was the one that had their hands on all the weapons that we gave them!
The United States is courting disaster, just like in Cambodia. We’re propping up multiple evil dictators in other countries in an effort to get at some thug who was once on our payroll. By the way, is patriarchy in all its forms any different from the standpoint of women?
We as a country promote anorexia, bulimia and promiscuous sexual activity worldwide and feel the right to point the finger at a country whose women cover their bodies out of modesty? This is a war of the powerful against the weak, the rich vs. the poor and man vs. woman, and it will never be resolved with more bloodletting.
Matthew Mulholland
junior
fine arts, education
