Big mistake to pass New START
Re: “Lame-duck session not so lame after all,” Dec. 23
President Obama’s New START nuclear weapons reduction treaty with the Russians and its approval and ratification by Congress are a huge mistake and will prove dangerous and not consistent with the interests of national security for our country.
This treaty will effectively limit further U.S. antimissile defenses for our country. It simply is not adequately verifiable, and the Russians can and will engage in significant violations and/or secretly cheat. This will likewise reduce the flexibility and survivability of our strategic military forces.
START will also solidify a large Russian superiority in nuclear weapons and it could force cuts in some of our conventional military capabilities, such as in heavy bombers and missile defenses of the homeland.
For our future safety and defense, the START treaty will make us less safe and more vulnerable to an attack from our enemies. This treaty should never have been ratified this month by the lame duck Congress.
Al Eisner
Silver Spring
Clearer lines needed when dealing with sexual morality
Re: “Afghan sex practices concern U.S., British forces,” Dec. 20
Our southern Pashtun Afghan allies’ attitudes about pedophilia as a “foible” rather than an abomination is troubling, but one large Western religious group, which strains to call pedophilic acts by its clergy a sin and treats it as “inappropriate behavior” (in other words, a foible), displays an attitude not greatly different.
One fear about extending civil rights to sexual orientation is that it would be difficult to argue that pedophilia is not a sexual orientation. Even though many civil rights advocates, rooted in the black church, oppose extending civil rights to sexual orientation, the Mattachine Society marched with Martin Luther King against segregation, hoping that liberalizing public attitudes on race would spill over into liberalizing public attitudes on sexual orientation.
So too today do pro-pedophilia groups march alongside the wider homosexual movement, even though the wider homosexual movement does not approve of pedophilia, hoping to mainstream their orientation.
Dino Drudi
Alexandria
