AFGHANISTAN
Obama's war because Bush focused on Iraq
The May 17 letter writer was right: President Obama has now claimed the war in Afghanistan as the war that should have been fought and finished. But does anyone remember that it was President George W. Bush who walked away from Afghanistan seven years ago, just when Al-Qaida and the Taliban were all but footnotes in history? Does anyone realize that when Bush walked away from Afghanistan, he gave Al-Qaida and the Taliban the chance to come back from the brink of extinction? Does anyone realize that when he walked away from Afghanistan he did exactly the same thing that America, under his father, then-Vice President George H.W. Bush, did when the Soviet Union withdrew its troops in 1989, which led to the rise of the Taliban?
Many of you complaining about Obama and the current situation in Afghanistan were right there with Bush, beating the Iraq war drums, which allowed Bush to walk away from Afghanistan and allowed Al-Qaida and the Taliban to make their comeback.
KIRK (V.J.) NEUMAN, APPLE VALLEY
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A May 17 letter writer asks a reasonable question about why we are not rising up as we did during the Vietnam War.
The answer is simple: We eliminated the draft. Can you imagine the uproar if a son, father, husband or brother were conscripted today?
HARRY LERNER, ST. LOUIS PARK
Coal plant conversions
Should we seek even greener options now?
As one of many who had a hand in converting three metro-area coal-burning power plants to cleaner fuels and operations, I was pleased to read your editorial on the Metro Emissions Reduction Project ("Cleaner air for metro," May 16). One of my proudest moments was watching the old smokestack at Xcel Energy's High Bridge plant in St. Paul fall to make room for the new natural-gas plant.