Burma Road rebuilding shows job can be done

The following tidbit was extracted from the June 4 issue of The Week magazine:

"In 1942, at the height of World War II, Japanese forces took control of northern Burma and destroyed sections of a highway that was the sole overland route from India to China. After the U.S. Army captured parts of Burma in 1944, Colonel Robert Seedlock was given command of the Burma Road. Just surveying the land entailed considerable risk, and the general who supervised its overall construction later called it 'the toughest job ever given to U.S. Army engineers in wartime.' "

Seedlock's responsibilities included directing 1,000 U.S. engineers and other troops, as well as 20,000 Chinese laborers. "Their course took them through thick rain forests and across treacherous 10,000-foot mountain passes, sometimes under Japanese artillery fire." In only four months, the crews successfully rebuilt 600 miles of road across the Himalayas. Seedlock also found part of the original route, used by Marco Polo in his travels, which shaved about 200 miles off the supply line ... "

A good question: If 600 miles of road could be rebuilt under treacherous conditions and mountainous terrain in four months, how is it that one mile of road rebuilding and widening (not construction) on Salt Lake Boulevard on relatively flat terrain using modern construction equipment and millions of dollars takes longer than two years for completion?

Focus section showed paper's Bush bashing

The Sunday Focus section clearly showed your anti-Bush leaning. Consider all the commentaries below, some with pictures:

• "John Kerry must stand and deliver" (front page with his big picture) and continued on the back page with the heading "Election: Kerry is easily lesser of 2 evils."
• "Bush speech reflects sobering work in Iraq."
• "Vile images, too, must be read to be understood."
• Cartoon by Dick Adair depicting Bush breaking an Iraq pottery.

All throughout the paper, I did not see anything positive about the administration, and almost every commentary is Bush-bashing.

As far as I can remember, your newspaper has never been editorially fair and has always been biased. Why would anyone pay for a newspaper that clearly promotes the other party's agenda and left-leaning ideologies?

Headline didn't tell the rest of the news

"Nation grows angry, worried over Iraq" was the headline to an article in Sunday's paper on page A5. As a mathematician, I was immediately drawn to the bar chart so I could look for the percentage of "angry" and "worried" Americans.

Given the headline, it didn't surprise me that 67 percent of those polled were worried and 57 percent of those polled were angry. What did surprise me was that 62 percent of those polled were also hopeful, a point missed in the headline. Why? Maybe because the number of hopeful had dropped and the number of angry had risen.

Regardless, you only find those details (and get closer to the truth) by reading the article. Based on the poll data, "Nation worried, but hopeful over Iraq" could have been the headline.

It is often difficult to glean the truth from sensationalist headlines, sound bites and poll data. I encourage all Americans to look beneath the surface. Only then will you find enough information to see through the bias and draw informed conclusions and opinions.

Patriot Act protects citizens of this country

Amanda El-Dakhakhni voiced her opinion on the Patriot Act and the U.S. Bill of Rights in the May 27 Island Voices column. The first line of her op-ed begins, "Returning from Egypt in early January, my father and I were stopped by U.S. Customs for well over an hour."

The mere fact that she has visited a Middle Eastern country during a war with Iraq should be a clear enough indicator as to why she was detained.

Yes, the Patriot Act granted some special rights that seem to infringe upon the Bill of Rights; however, what Miss El-Dakhakh-ni failed to realize is that those practices will only be used against people who have displayed suspicious activity.

She stated that the FBI, CIA and other security agencies now have access to personal medical, financial and electronic records in order to protect against terrorism. Those abilities by these security agencies will only be used as a tool to monitor people who have brought suspicion upon themselves. It does not mean that the FBI will randomly be tapping your phone call about the junior prom or checking your credit card history at Macy's.

I don't know if Miss El-Dakhakhni is a citizen or not, but she further writes that the attorney general "can choose to detain a non-citizen if he believes there are reasonable grounds that the individual may pose a threat to national security." Well, there you go. I, as a natural-born American, believe that this is a reasonable rule and that the one-hour detainment was not unreasonable at any cost, considering the origin of Miss El-Dakhakhni's flight.

I hope that the U.S. continues the Patriot Act because I believe it is a necessary and valuable tool to protect the citizens of this country.

Summer's not the time for cutback in service

With the summer break upon us, it's a real drag to read that the Hawai'i state public libraries' services will still be limited.

Summertime is the perfect time to get our school-aged children into the habit of reading. With limited hours and facilities, I might as well just let my kids watch TV all day.

The Liliha Public Library has been closed for a while now and was supposed to reopen Tuesday. Who knows now when it will open?

More money for DOE won't solve the problem

The Honolulu Advertiser's fanciful notion that "Washington ... cannot simply mandate new approaches to education without the cash to back it up" (May 25 editorial: "Federal 'No Child' law cannot fit all cases") is 100-proof snake oil.

Throwing more money down the DOE rat hole with a continuation of zero accountability guarantees only one thing: a more lavishly upholstered rat hole.

Likewise, any thought that because the DOE "has high expectations and high standards, it stands to reason that it will experience a higher 'failure' rate" is sheer malarkey. The DOE refuses to establish a common core curriculum precisely because it has abysmally low expectations of Hawai'i's schoolchildren and their teachers. DOE educrats have convinced themselves that the kids and their teachers can't handle a rigorous common core curriculum. Absent a common curriculum, everything will continue to be ad hoc, make it up as you go and hope for the best.

In the spirit of fairness, The Advertiser is to be commended for candidly noting "another problem facing Hawai'i is the nature of its single statewide school district." That indeed is the heart of the problem.

Until voters get a chance to drive a stake through the malign heart of the DOE, no amount of pious hand-wringing, deflective finger-pointing or the hurling of more taxpayer dollars down this ravening rat hole is going to improve things for kids who continue to be given the short end of the stick so that a few carefully chosen, upwardly mobile adult careers might continue to be floated on an ocean of tax dollars.

In comparing DOE with the habitats of genuine rodents, I confess to being guilty of rhetorical over-reach. Rats deserve a lot more respect. Mea culpa.

Lingle did exercise diplomacy

Having overseen international protocol for every Hawai'i governor since George Ariyoshi, I believe The Advertiser's editorial regarding Gov. Lingle's official mission to Israel was narrow-minded and badly misguided ("On Israel, Lingle must exercise diplomacy," May 28).

The editorial suggested that Gov. Lingle "would be wise to temper her official support for Israel" during an official visit. I must point out the Lingle administration encourages mutually beneficial business and economic development opportunities between Hawai'i and Israel. That is far different from officially supporting Israel.

The governor has not publicly expressed her personal opinions about Israeli policies, despite repeated requests by reporters in Hawai'i and the Middle East. She has stated that Israel is America's greatest ally in that part of the world, which is a fact, not opinion, as evidenced by our country's unwavering support of this 56-year-old democracy.

If The Advertiser really understood the facts of what is happening in Israel today as it fights to avoid annihilation, the editorial would never have been written. The Advertiser should study the history of the region, visit the holy land and write from a basis of reality.

When Israel established itself on May 14, 1948, the United States officially recognized the new nation that same day. And every American president, starting with Harry Truman and continuing through George W. Bush, has strongly supported Israel. Now, as America and its coalition allies wage the global war on terror, which country is our most trusted friend in the Middle East? Obviously that country is Israel.

This brings me back to The Advertiser's exhortation that Gov. Lingle "must exercise diplomacy." She showed great diplomacy during her missions to Japan, Iraq and Israel. She does so every time she greets official delegations from nations such as China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Morocco, Guatemala, Myanmar, Brunei, Cambodia, Russia and Germany. In fact, more than 60 nations have called on our governor since she took office in December 2002.

Gov. Lingle has reached far beyond our shores to create greater respect for the Aloha State at the highest levels of government on the Mainland and abroad, and she is helping Hawai'i realize its potential as an international gathering place.

I am proud of our emerging status as a global community, and I applaud Gov. Lingle for her instrumental role in this evolution and for her outstanding diplomacy.