No narco-terrorism for you
Marc A. Thiessen’s Dec. 5 op-ed, “Trump’s boat strike playbook was written by Obama,” defended the Trump administration’s designation of drug cartels as terrorist organizations. The term “narco-terrorist” makes about as much sense as the moniker “Soup Nazi.” The boatman our military is obliterating, if they’re drug runners at all, are capitalists gone awry, not the radicals hellbent on killing Americans whom President Barack Obama targeted.
Had I lost a child to drugs or worked tirelessly to help people suffering from addiction, I’d be deeply offended that President Donald Trump is citing the plight of a vulnerable portion of our population to justify what are clearly illegal activities in the Caribbean.
Eric Greene, Annapolis
The reactions to the Nov. 29 front-page article “Hegseth order on first boat strike, officials say: Kill them all” reveal how we think as a nation: The problem to us isn’t so much the illegal war on alleged drug boats but, rather, the illegal killing of the survivors. We have a very odd way of thinking: Extrajudicial operations by our military are morally justifiable or forgivable, until they offend our sensibilities.
We have taken these types of strikes as a given part of our system, leading to even greater complacency with regard to blatant violations of international law. Perhaps if we cared more about curtailing presidential war powers, we wouldn’t have to say to the administration in this instance, “How dare you commit illegal acts while carrying out an illegal operation?”
Ethan Feingold, Chicago
How about a Department of Presidential Doublespeak?
Regarding the Dec. 4 news article “White House renames building the ‘Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace’”:
The U.S. Institute of Peace was an independent nonprofit created by Congress in 1984. The Trump administration’s decision to add the president’s name to the institute’s prominent headquarters, on the northwest corner of the National Mall, comes after the president issued an executive order in February seeking to dismantle the organization.
Mirroring Trump’s immigration enforcement tactics, the institute’s president was rudely removed from the headquarters by law enforcement, and the Trump administration fired nearly all of his staff. Some fired staffers have sued, and judges have ruled in their favor.
Stan Heuisler, Baltimore
In light of the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace, The Post should hold a competition for readers to suggest other renamings. I suggest renaming the Department of War — as the Department of Offense.
Richard Abel, Santa Monica, California
The U.S. has its own version of Iran’s water woes
The arguments in the Dec. 3 editorial “The painfully obvious reason Iran is running out of water” could just as easily be applied to the American Southwest. Like Iran, much of it is arid. Yet the federal government and the various state governments have spent decades impounding water supplies behind dams, building canals to transport that water, and providing three-fourths of it to farmers at subsidized rates. These subsidies have encouraged farmers to plant crops that are heavily dependent on water, such as cotton and alfalfa.
The Editorial Board understands the problem: “In a functioning market, where water has a price,” Iranians “would have been alerted to their water shortages ahead of time.” Water prices would rise, giving farmers an incentive to conserve by planting more water-efficient crops and investing in water-efficient irrigation practices.
The United States has yet to learn this lesson. Negotiations continue over how to reallocate diminishing supplies of water from the Colorado River. Even as farmers make increasing demands for subsidized water, tech companies are building chip plants and data centers that require massive amounts of water — in the Southwest! Meanwhile, global warming is making water supply ever more unpredictable.
Perhaps Iranians will show Americans how to solve the problem, if they can.
Michael McGill, Alexandria
Marjorie Taylor Greene has earned her pension
Never in my wildest hallucinations would I have found myself defending the subject, but the Nov. 23 editorial “Marjorie Taylor Greene and the future of MAGA” was at best misleading in its final paragraph: “Greene is waiting to formally resign until Jan. 5. That’s two days after she crosses the five-year threshold required to qualify for a lifetime congressional pension. Maybe she’s not so different from the politicians she detests.”
Members of Congress may indeed begin drawing a retirement check after five years service. But it’s not a lot of money. Members who retire before the 20-year mark receive 1 percent of their salary per year for every year of service. For Greene, who draws a salary of $174,000, that comes to a whopping $8,700 per year.
And who pays for this? The taxpayers alone? Nope. Congress members contribute 4.4 percent of their salary to their retirement fund.
Rather than gaming the system, Greene is doing what any sane person would do under the circumstances.
Donald R. Juran, Rockville
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