Letters To The Editor
September 21, 2011 - MidWeek
| Share
Del.icio.usShooting back
I commend Bob Jones for exposing the peddlers inside Diamond Head and the consequent “cease-and-desist” order issued.
But I differ in his scenario at that Nevada restaurant shooting scene. If everyone were “packing heat” and a deranged person had entered firing at customers, bullets might have been flying from everywhere, but the returned fire would have been at that one person, which might have given some of the ones who were murdered a fighting chance.
For the same reason Mr. Jones said he was “packing” on those Vietnam patrols, I am sure most of the able-bodied at the restaurant would have preferred going down perhaps firing a 9mm semi-automatic pistol back at the murderer, instead of watching in horror as he mowed down those defenseless patrons. If Mr. Jones had been there, would he have preferred to have been unarmed, or to have a chance to shoot back?
Jay Zablan
Honolulu
Boo, statehood
Unlike Larry Price and letter-writer Karen Abe, I do not “salute statehood.”
As a native Hawaiian, statehood was the final indignity in a process that began with Captain Cook and included the overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani. It could have been worse Russia was among the nations in those colonial days with an eye on seizing these Islands.
But the fact remains that under U.S. statehood many Hawaiians remain secondclass citizens in the islands of their ancestry.
Kanani Lee
Honolulu
Real 9/11 lesson
Michelle Malkin is correct in part with her column “All The Wrong Lessons From 9/11.” She correctly identified the underlying fundamental reason for 9/11 as well as the Oklahoma bombing, Norway massacre, David Koresh and the KKK, IRA and any racial supremacist group: “extremism.”
Extremism manifested through religious or ideological principles does not necessarily make one a terrorist. The Amish are an example of “religious extremism” but are hardly considered terrorists.
There are terrorist Islamic extremists, just as there are terrorist Christian extremists, terrorist Jewish extremists, and when a Buddhist monk sets himself on fire in protest, he also is committing a form of terror.
She is showing her own extremist ideals and ignorance by saying “Koran inspired soldiers ... hated us before Israel existed.”
It appears that the “wrong lesson” learned from 9/11 was that it was an Islamic attack on our country. It was an attack by a violent form of religious and ideological extremism. That’s the lesson.
G. Kemp
Kailua
E-mail this story | Print this page | Comments (0) | Archive | RSS Comments (0) |
Most Recent Comment(s):
