Editorials / Opinion

My immediate reaction to the mass murder of young students in Pakistan [“Pakistan makes arrests in Taliban school carnage,” Nation & World, Dec. 21] was to ask: What kind of monsters would kill innocent children? Then I recalled that for a decade after the 1991 U.S. attack on Iraq, under both Republican and Democratic presidents, the…

Although Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew are taking steps to ending the schism between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, these efforts are hard to notice when there is a terrorist group, the Islamic State, persecuting and murdering Christians in Syria and Iraq [“Pope, patriarch demand end to IS attacks,” Nation &…

A recent editorial stated the need to debate further military action in the Middle East [“Middle East flareup requires diplomacy, humility,” Opinion, Sept. 18]. I agree. The result of the debate should be the refusal by the U.S. House to support such action. The U.S. cannot win a war in the Middle East because war there…

If Wednesday’s headline “Embattled Kurds are key in fight against Islamic State” [Nation & World, Oct. 7] is correct then U.S. efforts to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the Islamic State are doomed to failure. The Kurds are not the key, Sunni Arabs are. The Islamic State exists because Sunnis in Eastern Syria and Western…

We in the U.S. never learn [“Egyptian extremists may be copying Islamic State’s brutal methods,” Nation & World, Sept. 28]. Does no one remember Iran? We withdrew support from the Shah, our ally for decades, and ended up with the terrorist theocracy there. After accusing the Shah of being a ruthless dictator, Ayatollah Khomeini killed…

I find it harder and harder to take the president seriously on matters of foreign policy [“Egyptian extremists may be copying Islamic State’s brutal methods,” Nation & World, Sept. 28]. He wants me to be outraged about something he calls Islamic State, and he doesn’t want me to be outraged about something we all…

Our latest war in Iraq and Syria is indeed a strange operation [“Weapons use in Syria airstrikes outpaces raids on Islamic State in Iraq,” Nation & World, Sept. 24]. We bomb, but there seems to be no attempt at stopping other countries in the Middle East from supplying funds or to stop them…

U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Seattle, is to be commended for his wise, albeit lonely, vote against $500 million in funding for training rebels to fight the Islamic State [“The messy campaign against the Islamic State,” Opinion, Sept. 19]. I urge him to also vote against any authorization for war, and ask Sens. Murray…

The letter writer encouraging the U.S. to stay out of the Middle East conflict [“Other countries are smart to not become involved,” Northwest Voices, Sept. 18] claims that other countries such as Japan and China, which are neither militarily nor politically involved in the Middle East conflict, are instead busy “educating their youths.” I beg…

As conflicts flare up in Iraq, Syria, Ukraine, and throughout the world, Americans once again are left to ponder: Should we get involved? [“France joins US against Islamic State over Iraq,” Nation & World, Sept. 19]. More pointedly, we should be asking: how should we get involved? Support for military intervention is fickle and…