Letters: December 6, 1995

The War on Drugs
Blatant Bigotry
The Bomb
Alonzo Church '24*27
Being There


The War on Drugs

Re your November 8 feature "Putting Away Mosquera,"congratulations to Cheryl Pollak '75 and Beth Wilkinson '84 on their successful prosecution of this sociopath, and to writer Dan White '65 for his excellent story.
Exciting, even satisfying, as the story of the Mosquera prosecution was, this reader finds in it more to mourn than celebrate. For it is just another example of the evils the war on drugs-and the lost wars on alcohol, gambling, and "vice"-unleashed.
To put the Mosquera story in context, one must first ask whether the illicit export of opium and cocaderivatives to the United States have worse effects on us than our government-subsidized export of tobacco products do on the poppy and cocagrowing countries and to the world at large. From this perspective, our Marlboro man is a far greater villain than all the Cali cowboys.
Next, turn to the perversion of our legal system that kept Mosquera in the U.S. so he could be prosecuted for crimes he committed in Colombia. Consider the effects on judges, prosecutors, and jurors of enforcing laws they know to lack any moral or rational basis. And think about the rampant use of informers ($100 million of tax moneys to them in 1993), perjury, and plants to obtain drug convictions and civil forfeitures. Finally, ponder the death by fright of a 70yearold minister whose door was bashed in by narcs acting on an informer's tip. Then you will understand why the only surprise in the Simpson jurors' deliberations was that they took so long.
But leave aside the moral desolation and social dislocation caused by the drug war and focus on the Mosquera story itself. Go through it and substitute "Moran" for "Mosquera"; "Capone" for "Escobar"; "Chicago" for "Medellín"; and "scotch" for "cocaine" and "booze" for "drugs." Make those changes-and the prosecutors male-and paw could have run the story in 1925. How little things have changed. How little we've learned.
The early 20th-century wars on alcohol, gambling, vice, and drugs, in large part, grew out of the fear that immigrants (Irish, Italians, Jews, Chinese) would dominate the country. Similarly, today's war on drugs is a continuation of the cultural wars that developed around the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War. There can be no hope for national renewal-for any reknitting of our social fabric-until this evil war ends.
Peter D. Kinder '70
Cambridge, Mass.


Blatant Bigotry

In his October 11 letter, Nicholas Simeonidis '83 claims that George Denniston '55 is guilty of "blatant bigotry" and "treat[ed] with utter disrespect the elders" of the Catholic church in his remarks at Reunions as reported in the July 5 paw.
This is untrue. For the record, the article said that Denniston "blamed the Roman Catholic Church for contributing to the population explosion. He accused the church's 'celibate bishops' of forming the major obstacle to population control by their opposition to contraception and abortion."
I see no bigotry there. Is it not true that Catholic bishops are celibate, or that the Catholic church opposes abortion and contraception and that it has wide influence in many countries whose populations are increasing rapidly? These are facts, not bigotry.
Simeonidis suggests that "ridicule of a religion is hate speech." What nonsense! I firmly support his constitutional right to believe whatever he wants. But my constitutional rights guarantee me the right to criticize his beliefs, and I certainly intend to exercise that right when I find them to be illogical, dangerous, or just plain silly.
Simeonidis wants to have it both ways: the freedom to hold beliefs, and immunity from criticism for those beliefs. This is the viewpoint of one afraid to subject his views to the marketplace of ideas.
Jeffrey Shallit '79
shallit@graceland.uwaterloo.ca
Kitchener, Ontario

The Bomb

Since revisionists criticized the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the September 13 paw, others in subsequent issues have defended the bombings, accusing the critics of rewriting history. The main rewriting I see is of the critics' letters. None of them favored an invasion of Japan over the bombings-but that's the comparison made by "traditionalists" (the opposite of "revisionists"?). Instead, the criticism of the bombings is that the United States could have ended the war without any further bloodshed, either by demonstrating a nuclear weapon or by allowing the Japanese to surrender with the single condition that the Emperor's person be respected.
Jett McCormick '45 makes the excellent point that attitudes toward the bombings seem to depend on distance from them (though he ignores the claim of David Harten '84 that General Eisenhower and Admiral Leahy opposed the bombings). I suspect that some of that dependence comes from the feelings of the traditionalists who served in World War II-many of them speak of their terrific relief on learning that nuclear bombs had been dropped and the war was over. But wouldn't they have been equally relieved to hear of a barely conditional Japanese surrender? What would their views be if they were colored by remembering a triumph of diplomacy rather than one of mass killing?
As a sympathetic former employee of Los Alamos National Laboratory (albeit one who didn't work on weapons), I'd like to see an examination of the ethical questions that the Manhattan Project scientists faced or ignored. Everything I've read takes for granted that one side or the other is obviously right.
Finally, I can't find the grounds Jim Benham '39 has for saying that the revisionists "attack American ideals." I can't even tell what ideals he means-none of the writers in question attacked America's reasons for fighting World War II. I'm sure Mr. Benham would agree that not killing the innocent is one of our ideals. Nonetheless, mass attacks on civilians are a horrible reality in American history (and far more horrible in the histories of some other countries). Therefore, it's worth examining every such case, without automatically defending everything an American does while fighting for democracy, in the hope that our leaders will decide thoughtfully and morally in the future.
Jerry Friedman '83
jfriedman@nnm.cc.nm.us
Española, N.M.

In the spring of 1945, while serving in a staff assignment with a Navy amphibious force in the Mediterranean, I saw a top-secret message estimating that if the Japanese defended their homeland like they had Okinawa, we would lose one to three million men and the Japanese at least 10 million. When I received orders to return to the United States for 30 days' leave before proceeding to Okinawa for the invasion of Japan, I figured my life expectancy would be about one hour and 13 minutes. On my way back to the U.S., I went AWOL for two weeks to visit my family in Brazil, since I hadn't seen them for three and a half years. On the day I picked up my orders at naval personnel headquarters at 90 Church Street in New York City we dropped the first atomic bomb. Imagine my relief-I was born again! My orders were canceled, and I got back to a normal life in the interior of Brazil. The bleeding hearts and eggheads should study their history and think about us poor devils who had lived through four years of war when President Truman made his momentous decision.
Seymour G. Marvin '37
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

As one of those who believes the atom bombs dropped on Japan saved his life, I am puzzled by comments about the horror they caused. There seems to be some misconception as to what war is like. Wherever war touches down it kills everything, and what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a small fraction of what happened all over the world.
War is a badly burned child of the future lifting his ravaged body to the heavens in prayer that war will never strike again. The lesson still hasn't been learned. Today, the broken bodies of children appear on television while mindless people launch devastating attacks on their brothers. Some of those critical of our dropping atomic bombs on Japan will someday be our leaders. I pray that when they are faced with such decisions, visions of those bombed-out cities will live in their minds, and they will do everything they can to prevent such horrible things from happening to our children and our children's children.
Robert G. Austin '48
Stockton, Calif.

Alonzo Church '24*27

I was saddened to read in the October 11 paw of the death of Professor Alonzo Church '24 *27. My one encounter with him was in an oral examination during my senior year, but I've never forgotten it. He quietly steered me through a certain mathematical proof, and in those few minutes he patiently and generously taught. I learned by doing as he directed.
Besides being an intellectual giant in greater mathematics, he reached out to mankind in his Introduction to Mathematical Logic (Princeton University Press, 1956). Princeton awarded him an honorary Doctor of Science in 1985.
Professor Church was a great American, and he deserves a book-length biography.
Richard A. Hord '43
Alliance, Neb.

Being There

Never in the 17 years I've been receiving paw have I read anything in it as powerful as James M. Kennedy '81's October 11 First Person, "Being There."
Kennedy's story about comforting a friend and his wife after the loss of their child dealt with an issue that Princeton professors don't explicitly teach and that the university doesn't seem to value. In its coverage of the university and its alumni, paw needs to concern itself with more than matters of the mind; I would like to see it initiate an ongoing conversation that also deals with habits of the heart and stirrings of the soul. Its editors need to engage alumni as well as inform them, while alumni need to revisit what constitutes success in life, not just success in the boardroom. We all need to redefine the mark and measure of what exactly constitutes service to our fellow man, our nation, and our God.
Mark L. Kokol '78
martin_kokol@byu.edu
Provo, Utah

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