Letters on drone support, Trump and ‘1984,’ littering protestors

Drones watch over our ground troops

Regarding “Killing from afar” (Feb. 25 Letters to the Editor): The woman who generated the letter writer’s disgust is a soldier. She is doing her job and duty in protecting those soldiers who are on the ground in the countries her team watches over.

That the enemy gets killed is a fact of warfare. I would rather it be some terrorists, regardless of their motivations, who get killed than one of our people.

This officer and her group provide eyes on the enemy and on the terrain surrounding the troops. Quite often, this saves their lives by keeping them from walking into an ambush or an area loaded with improvised explosive devices.

Regardless of what political motivation is behind the troops being deployed to the Middle East, they are Americans who are going where they are told to go and defending freedom as they are trained to do. To cry about how misguided our government’s policy is in sending them there is irrelevant to them being on the ground in a foreign country and being in harm’s way.

Regardless of where the group is located that watches over the ground troops, they, too, are combat soldiers, and they are doing the job they have been trained to do. They should be recognized as heroes, not vilified because some group with a totally unrealistic view of the world we live in today disagrees with government policy.

Trump and ‘1984’

We are moving into a “1984” society with our president attacking news organizations that present a contrary and oftentimes critical view of him.

His lies are to be our truths. Different opinions, even from judges who contradict him, are not to be tolerated. There are to be no checks on his power.

The way federal agencies are to report their progress is to satisfy “business interests.” Information deviating from this will be liquidated. Those proposing concern for environmental safety will be purged. All science must be Trumpian.

Regulations will be eliminated and addressed not on the basis of the common good but to make the rich richer, and the rest of us disenfranchised. All sources of discontent will be from external, anti-Trump interests.

We are to believe that the insecurity we feel means we are more secure. Ignore that Trump has increased the polarization, and that acts of hatred in America are up. He has disrupted international relations and called decent refugees and immigrants terrorists. Don’t see that his propaganda is burning down liberty and producing an American fascism, while fueling hostile reactions internationally.

Congressional powers are fiddling with their own agenda, as we become less safe. With the destruction of public education, two plus two may well equal five, and we may be forced to love King Donald.

Littering is OK?

It is very disturbing and a little ironic to me that a protest about protecting the groundwater on sacred Native American lands in North Dakota left the actual protest site so littered with debris that the Army Corps of Engineers estimated it might need nearly 500 dumpsters to clear the area.

So groundwater is a big concern for those protesting, but they don’t care about litter?

I don’t get that. Pollution is pollution, whether it comes from a pipeline or a piece of trash.

Not a great ‘gig’

As a nearly 70-year-old retired nurse, I wish I could have gotten a pass on rheumatoid arthritis. Sounds like sore joints, I know, but RA can lead to numerous systemic complications. Medications led to early cataracts, and I have needed two surgeries due to joint damage.

Obviously, cancer, kidney disease and diabetes are severe disease states with high associated health care costs. Two messages for the Republicans:

▪  Wellness does not occur in a vacuum; it takes patients, clinicians and insurers to bring down costs.

▪  It is offensive to suggest, as former GOP Sen. Rick Santorum did recently, that people with pre-existing conditions are running a scam and have a great “gig.”

Though it is true that high-impact disease states such as diabetes can be adversely impacted by low patient adherence, it is lack of coverage that is most detrimental to our health care bottom line.

This story was originally published March 2, 2017 at 5:02 AM with the headline "Letters on drone support, Trump and ‘1984,’ littering protestors."