Letters to the editor, April 11, 2008

If Gen. David Petraeus himself cannot define success and is unable to articulate the conditions for ending the war, then it is high time we stopped digging ourselves deeper into this hole.

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and more than tens of thousands of U.S. troops killed or wounded, trillions of dollars wasted, an entire region of the world caught up in turmoil, the infrastructure of Iraq destroyed, U.S. credibility in tatters, inflationary war spending sinking the economy and no end in sight from the smartest guy in the room.

What possible risks are we taking that have not already resulted in bad outcomes?

It's time to go.

GEORGE HUTCHINSON, MINNEAPOLIS

We work at the University of Minnesota, a public institution. It closes on Christian holidays. Tests and breaks are planned around Christian holidays. The floating holiday this year was on Good Friday. The university claims it is not a Christian university. Should we believe it?

Brooklyn Park has a community center that receives public money. It has a large Christmas tree every year, is closed on Christmas and has "holiday parties" around Christmas. The community center claims it is not a Christian institution, but should we believe it?

Why are public schools closed on Sundays, while Muslims have to go to class on Fridays? This allows Christians to educate their children within the church while denying Muslim parents such a right. The system is designed to allow space and time for Christians to go to church and so on, but Kersten meticulously grills a religious minority for wanting the same thing.

Is Kersten open to allowing some public schools to close on Thursdays and Fridays instead of Saturdays and Sundays? If we want a complete separation of all religious and public-school functions, it should apply to all religions.

FEDWA WAZWAZ, BROOKLYN PARK, AND Marcia Lynx Qualey, St. Paul

Where was Kersten? I just finished reading Kersten's column about the publicly funded Muslim school. I salute her concern about Islam studies and prayer in the school.

Yet I kept trying to imagine a similar article from her pen about Christian attempts to put religion into the schools. Just impossible to imagine! Perhaps you could reprint one of Kersten's earlier articles about Christian efforts to invade the public schools.

Beware of witch hunts In seems that congratulations may be in order for Katherine Kersten. In her never-ending crusade to uncover the supposed treachery of the Muslim community in the Twin Cities area, she may have finally scored a point. If the TIZA charter school in Inver Grove Heights is indeed in violation of federal guidelines governing public schools, then it should indeed be forced to conform to the accepted standard.

But if Kersten's assertions are unfounded, she owes the school an apology.

Whichever the case, Kersten needs to keep in mind that witch hunts are never pretty -- whether they take place in puritan New England, the 1950s or in today's society.

PAMELA HANSON, BURNSVILLE

How ridiculous is the Legislature? Both the House and Senate have investigated, complained and publicized all of the Minnesota Veterans Home's shortcomings and noncompliance of state Department of Health rules and regulations for nursing homes. This has gone on for months. They have publicly stated that our veterans need better nursing care.

When will they learn?

ROBERT J. JOHNSON, MAPLE GROVE

The April 6 Star Tribune article "Health-savings plans may not live up to name" discusses the lack of a cost benefit that one would expect from a health-care innovation that allows greater consumer choice, but it says nothing about the causes of this disappointing result.

The causes are basic and simple. Just go back to Econ 101 on free-market efficiency, and you find that consumer choice is only half of the game. The other half is realistic provider competition, and this is what we do not have.

So long as government regulations and mandates force an 18-year-old man to pay a health-insurance premium that also covers a $40,000 in-vitro fertilization for a 45-year-old woman, the benefits of consumer choice are greatly limited. So long as government regulations and controls shield the corporations providing medical care from competition, the consumer's choices have a reduced effect on cost.

Andrew Yarrow's April 7 commentary ("Early retirement is an act of selfishness") was ridiculous. Work is work for most people and not life. Life should be lived and experienced by working the least amount of time possible for the maximum amount of money. The notion that retiring early is un-American is true insofar as Americans define their lives by working. Who, given the chance, would choose work over time spent with friends and family?

The fact that the economy is in the dumps and our government is bankrupt is the fault of the Bush administration's pumping trillions of dollars into the war in Iraq. If even a fraction of the money spent on defense was spent to pay down our Social Security debt, we'd all be better off.

KEITH COSTMAN, MINNEAPOLIS

You got it right that the Dominic Jones case is about taking responsibility for our actions ("Guilty or not, innocence lost," April 10). The big question is how to accomplish that.

Certainly stretching the adolescent mind to consider the future is crucial, and, by the way, that is what abstinence education attempts to do. And it also means getting college administrators to actually think beyond the possibility of decreased enrollment if they back off their casual approach to student drinking and consider not only the dramatically ruined lives but also the incremental decrease in academic achievement.