Clarissa Costa

Montes Claros, Brazil

I appreciated the frank warning about global warming’s immensely negative impact on our flora and fauna with the disappearance of hundred of species of animals and birds (“Trouble Beyond the Tropics”). You are absolutely right in drawing attention to the exploitation of natural resources by developed countries for their present economic growth, even at the cost of leaving nothing for coming generations. Industrialized and developed rich countries in the West have only one slogan: “I want it all, and I want it now.” We try to travel to other planets to find the presence of life, but we do not know how to preserve life on our own beautiful planet. The recent natural disasters and the change of world climate speak for themselves and give us a clear warning to save our planet from further irreparable destruction and contamination.

S.R.A. Shah

Vroomshoop, the Netherlands

Your Oct. 16 article, “Last Chance for Fish,” omitted important details regarding efforts at the United Nations to address concerns over the state of the world’s fish stocks, including U.S. actions to address several policy priorities. President Bush has directed U.S. negotiators to call upon nations to prohibit their vessels “from engaging in destructive fishing practices in areas of the high seas where there are no applicable conservation and management measures or in areas with no applicable international fishery management organizations or agreements.” Many fish stocks around the world are in decline. More needs to be done to conserve and manage ocean fisheries, to ensure their sustainability, to rebuild stocks that are currently depleted, and to end destructive fishing practices on the high seas. The United States is a world leader in advocating all of these essential steps, whether through the United Nations or at the regional and subregional level. We are at the forefront of international efforts to strengthen existing multilateral mechanisms to safeguard these valuable shared marine resources, to create necessary new organizations where none currently exist, and to combat illegal fishing activity. U.S. representatives chaired the U.N. conference in May that provided recommendations on how to carry this work forward. All of these issues will be considered at the U.N. this fall, as nations seek agreement on conserving ocean resources.

Claudia A. McMurray

Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans,

Environment and Science

Washington, D.C.

The Tragic Face of War They say a picture is worth 1,000 words. That is why I am so troubled by the fact that there was not one photograph depicting the pain of Israelis in your photo essay “True Pain” (Aug. 14). You claimed to show the face of the recently concluded war in the Middle East. But only one side of that face was shown. To add insult to injury, “Eye for an Eye” (Aug. 14) did not include among its photos even one that showed the devastation in the northern cities of Israel or the deaths of innocent civilians who were intentionally targeted by the Hizbullah. The Lebanese may have been victims of Hizbullah terrorists who used them as human shields and therefore deserving of sympathy. But aren’t the numerous Israeli civilians who were killed by the daily barrage of hundreds of Hizbullah missiles deserving of the same?

Gail W. Resnick

Jerusalem, Israel

So much for the promotion of democracy in the Middle East! A viable Israel requires friendly neighbors and a friendly relationship between neighbors cannot be built on blood, especially not that of innocent children. So it is about time that all parties to the recent conflict and their influential “friends” engage in a dialogue about peace rather than talking about peace talks. The Lebanese people, having understood some very important lessons from their civil war, have decided not to fight among each other anymore. Some parties might have bet that the Lebanese would help them. But they were so wrong. They did not take into account the political wisdom and maturity of the Lebanese people, who made it clear that all Lebanese issues should be dealt with internally, without foreign interference, through dialogue, and only through dialogue. Many people would have loved to see Lebanon’s various religious factions at war again. But they didn’t see this happen and they never will. That is a lesson in democracy and solidarity that the Lebanese people have shown the world.

May Tony Akl

Beirut, Lebanon

Your picture of the “armed and dangerous” Hizbullah fighter was impressive. But your story would have been more accurate if you had also run pictures of the tanks and aircrafts the Israeli forces used to slaughter Lebanese civilians–women and children.

Margono M. Amir

Bekasi, Indonesia

Pragmatic Peacenik Peres The Aug. 14 interview with Shimon Peres, Israel’s vice prime minister, about the need for Israel’s tough stance against Hizbullah was illuminating (" ‘We Are at War’ “). But it would have had a greater impact had you put this man in a context that few are familiar with. Peres created the Peres Center for Peace, which raised billions to create an economic infrastructure in Gaza and the West Bank so Palestinians could build an effective state for themselves. It has fostered cultural and economic relationships with Israel’s Arab neighbors. Peres, who has been called a “peacenik” and an appeaser, is probably Israel’s most pragmatic and optimistic activist for a workable peace. But even he has to realize that Hizbullah–and Hamas, for that matter–are out for one thing only: the eradication of Israel and its citizens.

Sharon J. Kahn

New York, New York

Shimon Peres says “nobody understands” the purpose of Hizbullah’s attack on Israel. I think he answers his own question later in the same interview when he admits his country could “do without” the latest round of damage to their image. If Hizbullah knows Israel well enough to know how much it hates taking casualties (a weakness it intends to exploit, rather than a quality it respects), it knows that when attacked, Israel is given to hitting back. Hizbullah attacked–knowing perfectly well that Israel would respond in kind and that Lebanese civilians would die in the process–in order to goad the Jewish state into damaging its image in the international community. If Israel wants to be a safe place for Jews to live, it needs to stop letting its neighbors bait it into participating in the cycle of violence.

Alyson Miers

Lushnje, Albania

The Syria-Lebanon Axis Thanks for Robert Baer’s superb piece on the situation in Lebanon (“Appointment in Damascus,” Aug. 14). Syria’s role in stabilizing Lebanon had been a crucial one for decades. Forcing out the Syrian troops last year was a miserable failure of U.S. foreign policy. It was foreseeable that Hizbullah’s position would be significantly strengthened, especially after the huge election gains this terrorist party made. Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has no clue how to stop Hizbullah or stabilize the country. Baer underscores this viewpoint impressively with brilliant examples from his own experiences in the region. Ronald Reagan, as Baer rightly points out, did well cooperating with the then Syrian leader Hafez al-Assad in order to put pressure on Hizbullah and minimize the terrorist group’s political options. So did former presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. But now comes George W. Bush, who thinks he can do without Syria as an important political player in the region, even with growing tensions between Iran and the West and the war between Hizbullah and Israel, which would not have been possible had Syrian troops remained in Lebanon. This just proves that President Bush is clearly on the wrong track: American foreign policy is biased, naive, narrow-minded and dangerous. The Bush administration seems to have virtually no experience on the diplomatic stage.

Lars Straeter

Dortmund, Germany

Ahmadinejad’s Bluster Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad keeps saying (“Iran Follies,” Aug. 14) that he wants to eliminate Israel. How is he going to do this? Nuke Israel? Bombs have a nasty habit of not being selective. He would kill more Palestinians and other Muslims in the area than “infidels” that way. If Ahmadinejad means what he says, he cannot do anything against Israel. So let us not get overexcited about this madman and deal with him appropriately. Nobody wants another war.

Thomas Leuow

Fontaine-la-Gaillarde, France

Koizumi’s Incendiary Actions Christian Caryl’s informative article “Unwelcome Visits” (Aug. 14) raises a number of questions. Why was former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi so intimidated by the reactionary members of the Japanese establishment that he couldn’t give a moment’s rational thought to the best interests of his country? Why couldn’t he think for himself long enough to have recognized the obvious fact that the war criminals enshrined at Yasukuni Shrine are there as a consequence of an error? They have no claim to be memorialized as the nation’s war dead. They died long after the end of hostilities as a consequence of being found guilty of misleading their country into acts of aggression against their neighbors and ultimately much of the world. Were their names to be removed from Yasukuni and, if the xenophobic ultranationalists insist, placed somewhere such as the Hachiman Shrine in Kamakura, the issue would be brought to a conclusion that all but the most anti-Japan among the country’s neighbors would find acceptable. It is most regrettable that an otherwise intelligent man has permitted a small minority of his nation to force him into a position that will ensure his going down in history as a politician who respects war criminals.

Richard Spear

Jojor Bahru, Malaysia

Rating an Economic Recovery While Gail Fosler may be correct in stating that Japan’s economic recovery is not as strong as some people say (“Japan’s Not-So-Hot Recovery,” Aug. 14), she spends a good deal of her column writing about how much Japan’s economy depends on others. When she writes that Japan’s economy tracks American and global cycles, this means that America’s economy tracks global cycles, as well. Moreover, this is an old complaint about Japan’s economy; that there isn’t “enough” domestic consumption. Fosler, like others who rely on this standard criticism, does not understand Japan. Japan’s culture is not like that of America: there is still a strong dislike of waste. Zen has helped instill the idea of knowing sufficiency. America’s culture, on the other hand, promotes over consumption. And as Fosler hints at the end of her article, Japan’s consumption is likely to decrease in the coming years due to the aging of its society–the elderly do not consume as much as younger people. I also do not understand how Fosler can state that Japan’s domestic sales growth lags behind that of the United States when she states that both Japan and America have 2 to 3 percent growth. It would be refreshing if economists such as Fosler could understand that not all countries can model their economies on America’s.