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Setting a global example

Listen to us.

The Syrians are killing each other. More than one hundred thousand dead. More than 1,400 were killed by poison gas.

Where is the humanity? We must bomb them, our leaders say.

What nonsense.

First of all, we are the last ones to use morality as an excuse to bomb people. We didn't speak up when Saddam Hussein used poison gas to kill thousands in Iraq.

We poisoned the Indians with small pox, we used Agent Orange, we used bombs that kill long after they explode, we used phosphorus bombs and we were masters at the use of Napalm.

Oh yes, there's Dresden and not to forget a couple of atom bombs.

We seem to be bombing some one all the time.

If we bomb Syria, no one knows whether we will do more harm then good.

Now if we really want to take action for humanitarian causes, let's get the biggest bang for our buck. Let's do something that is a sure good thing.

Sixteen thousand children die every day from malnutrition. Twenty thousand children die every day from curable diseases.

Never mind the human trafficking and such.

Let's spend our resources where we know the results will be good.

We would be heroes to the world (not much profit in it though).

What's really going on here?

Ted Janko, San Rafael

Wayward Republicans

Over the years, I have read many complaints from local GOP members who lament their lack of standing in California and Marin in particular.

Many complain that they are misunderstood and list the laudable reasons for being a Republican and many wonder why they are so seemingly isolated.

It does not matter what you stand for personally when your leaders have spent the last six years making no secret that they will do whatever they need to derail the president that serves us all, Republican, Democratic and all other political persuasions.

The issues the GOP suppress, derail and outright kill are issues that the people want. We all voted for President Barack Obama's health care plan, and it passed.

Now GOP leaders are once again readying their plans to derail as much of the law as they can.

They are talking about shutting down the government by denying funds.

Every time GOP leaders deny the peoples will, the GOP fuels local ire among Marin voters.

It isn't that the rest of us, left, center or right, do not resonate to the same issues as yourselves; it is the GOP's national and state leaders who are poisoning their own political well and the Marin Republicans' well along with theirs.

If the local GOP wants more people to lean its way, perhaps it should start by changing its leaders to those who remember that we are all in this together instead of operating on an "us versus them" point of view.

Chuck Porteous, Novato