‘Facing the Music’

Commenting on the reported use of Christina Aguilera’s pop songs at Guantanamo to force hardened Al Qaeda killers to collapse and capitulate, Mark Steyn traced the history of pop music as torture back to 1990, when surround-sound reportedly drove the Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega to surrender [“Facing the Music,” Opinion, June 20, 2005].

In fact, it goes back much further: In Billy Wilder’s 1961 comedy “One, Two, Three,” a young East Berlin communist (Horst Buchholz) was reduced to babbling capitalism by the endless playing of “The Itsy-Bitsy Teeny-Weeny Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini” – which might in fact come closer to torture than any of the gems Mr. Steyn or the Chicago Tribune came up with.

ROSANNE KLASS
Manhattan

‘Every Dog’

“Every Dog Has His Day” [Amity Shlaes, Opinion, June 21, 2005] contained some worthy comments made by three of the few remaining moderate Democratic members of Congress concerning the current Washington, D.C., fiscal situation.

Republicans are supposed to be the party that really believes in free enterprise, balanced budgets, and a reduction in the size of government at all levels – local, state, and federal. These core values have not been reflected over the past four years when anyone looks at the budget actions of Congress.

President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress have failed to control both spending and deficits. Mr. Bush has failed to veto any of the pork-laden spending bills sent to him by Congress. In 2004, Congress funded 14,040 pork-barrel projects at a total cost of $47.9 billion dollars.

Both liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans have given up balancing the budget. Except for Senator McCain and a few others, everyone else believes the best way to grease the wheels of re-election is to load up on billions in pork-barrel projects. Democrats and Republicans have morphed into one Washington inside-the-beltway party dedicated to staying in power regardless of the cost to taxpayers.

Their philosophy is to increase spending above the rate of inflation. Liberals won’t say no to social-welfare programs. Conservatives love any defense spending. Both support corporate welfare subsidies. They are leaving the next generation an inheritance of government debt in the trillions of dollars.

It appears that Republicans are more concerned about how to stay in the majority rather than balancing the budget. How ironic that after winning the Cold War against the evil empire of communism, it may be mismanagement of our economy that defeats us in the end. Perhaps the Blue Dog Democrats can shame the Republican-controlled Congress into returning to their core beliefs, which is how they got elected in the first place.

LAWRENCE PENNER
Great Neck, N.Y.

‘The Mounting Protests’

Re: “The Mounting Protests,” William F. Buckley Jr., Opinion, June 20, 2005. George Orwell would have surely smiled if he had read Mr. Buckley’s op-ed, in which he uses a phrase like “statistically exiguous” instead of “very small” in making his argument that our loss of American soldiers in Iraq has still been “inordinate” given the presumably modest importance of the objective being sought.

Indeed Mr. Buckley’s entire argument for pulling our troops out of Iraq illustrates a well-known Orwellian mantra that the use of stilted and awkward language usually reflects the author’s lack of clear thinking on the subject.

Does Mr. Buckley really think that we are not engaged in a war of “national self-defense”? How does he and his anonymous author know what will happen to our security if we let the Islamo-fascists win in Iraq? And there is nothing about pride involved in our struggle in Iraq. It is not a blind crusade to spread democracy to certain Arab countries.

Like World War II, it is a struggle to protect ourselves from and destroy an evil enemy who is out to destroy us. It is also like the Cold War, in which almost 100,000 Americans died in Korea and Vietnam to protect the world from totalitarian communism.

DAVID M. O’NEILL
Manhattan

‘The Stadium Expert’

Re: “The Stadium Expert on the Bronx,” Andrew Wolf, Page 1, June 16, 2005. President Carrion of the Bronx has been more productive with Mayor Bloomberg than Fernando Ferrer was with Mayor Giuliani.

Though Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Carrion have had many successes during their partnership and their work has been strong enough to put them both back in office, I wonder why Mr. Carrion continues to endorse Mr. Ferrer when Mr. Ferrer is the one who is fighting against projects like the stadium and the revitalization of the Terminal Market that will benefit his borough? The next four years would be a struggle for Mr. Carrion if he had to fight for his goals with a Mayor Ferrer.

ESTEBAN SOLANO
Bronx

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