Community centers need your support
C'mon folks, the Lanakila Multi-Purpose Senior Center and Waikiki Community Center need your support at this crucial time to stay afloat. Those two places offer a multitude of programs to satisfy the needs of people wanting to get out of their homes and meet other people with common interests. You'd be surprised at the variety of classes and outings for our seniors and others.
Find out by calling those places and see where you fit in. The sooner, the better.
Roy E. Shigemura
Honolulu
Poetry is wasted on matters of politics
Some say, "Save poetry for virtues that from heaven flow. Waste it not on matters of the lowly politic." Yet minds unmoved by perfect prose are swept away by words that wax poetic.
Remember, in matters of love, war and op-eds, it matters how the what is said.
Richard Y. Will
Honolulu
Disabled veterans should be protected
Federal laws that supposedly protect the jobs of men and women called to active duty do not protect the wounded and disabled. The employer does not have to offer the job back to a veteran who returns disabled. It becomes the employer's prerogative.
I feel sorry for those who have found this truth after returning from war and are left to move on with their lives. Every former president or corporate America should pay off a veteran's mortgage so his or her life has some sense of meaning after fighting for others and returning home to their families disabled. At least the families have a sense of place while searching for normalcy and perhaps a new way of life.
Former presidents who once served as commanders of the U.S. armed forces, give these veterans and their families a future even as convincing as when you declared and signed a declaration of war. Let's not talk of honor, let us speak of compassion and life.
Bert Sam Fong
8th All Hawaii Company U.S. Army
Kihei, Maui
Shinseki was wrong about Iraq deployment
Regarding "Hawaii general was right about Iraq" (
Letters, June 5): The Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein was toppled swiftly by minimum number of troops required; it was the quickest victory of our armed forces recorded so far. Deploying 400,000 troops, as suggested by Gen. Eric Shinseki, would have been severe if more troops were exposed to roadside explosives and jihadists who celebrate death. Phase I of the Iraq war was executed brilliantly.
Phase II, which was filling the vacuum after Saddam's ouster, was mismanaged. They assigned a civilian by the name of Paul Bremer to coordinate with the Iraqis and I think the sectarian mullahs became hostile toward our presence as occupier. And we are stuck momentarily. But we cannot cut and run. We must have faith and trust with our endeavors in Iraq. We will win.
Bernardo P. Benigno
Retired master sergeant
U.S. Army
Faith is evidence of unseen things
Mitch Kahle writes that Lt. Gov. James "Duke" Aiona is a "self-proclaimed 'man of faith,' which means he believes things without evidence"
(Letters, June 14). I don't know where Kahle would have gotten such a definition of faith. Certainly Christians don't accept that faith is a belief in something without evidence. Indeed, the book of Hebrews tells us that faith is the EVIDENCE of unseen things, and the assurance of that for which we hope.
Our faith is not a subjective opinion, but the result of an objective analysis of the evidence from the universe. To be sure, we do not begin with a presumption of naturalistic materialism as does Kahle. Rather, we examine the evidence, keeping in mind the second law of thermodynamics, which is that all things being equal, disorder will be expected. If we find complex order in the universe, it will not have happened at random, but by design. With this in mind, we do find complexity in the universe, and thus come to the reasonable conclusion that theistic design is the reason.
Can we be certain of this? No, but neither can Kahle be certain that his naturalism is correct: No one was there to witness the beginning of the universe. But we can see the intricate pattern left behind, and make our deductions from that.
Dean Schmucker
Wailuku