News-Journal from Mansfield, Ohio • 5

Letters Policy Comment An independent newspaper Tom Brennan, publisher and editor Carl Hunnell, managing editor We welcome letters of 350 words or less. Letters are subject to editing tor length, clarity and grammar. Letters that deal with private disputes or contain criticism of private individuals or businesses are not published. Sign letters and include phone number tor verification. Send letters to: Letters to the Editor, P.O.

Box 25, Mansfield 44901. Call 521-7206 with questions about submitted letters. E-mail letters to chunnellnncogannett.com. Letters to the editor, editorial columns and articles submitted to the News Journal may be published or distributed in prim, electronic or other forme. NEWS JOURNAL Thursday, December 6, 2001 PAGE SA Letters Editorial Vf' tri IckixhVouupon I ICJ "Tke "Return oFTWESNrg: Airaifaft must weed to Bead Cops get tough, folks get angry The issue: New Crestline Police Chief James Davis has stepped up enforcement just as he was hired to do.

Our opinion: Tougher enforcement always ruffles a few feathers, but the result likely will be a better quality of life in the village. You cannot make an omelet without breaking a few eggs and you cannot increase law enforcement presence without ruffling a few feathers. That appears to be the case in Crestline where new police Chief James Davis is under fire for stepping up crime enforcement efforts since taking the post about eight months ago. Ironically, it appears Davis is doing just what he was asked to do when hired. At that time, city council wanted him to crack down on nuisance crime, especially after several older Crestline residents complained village streets were no longer safe.

Davis said he is asking his officers to crack down on complaints coming from village residents concerning drunken driving, underage drinking, noise, fights and bar patrons allegedly urinating on other peoples' property. All of these seem like valid law enforcement concerns in the small community. Still, every traffic citation or every arrest means at least one more person is going to be mad at the police. Some of the concerns offered to village council about the police department this week seemed petty. One woman even went to the meeting to complain she was stopped for driving through a yellow light and that she has "heard" other Crawford County residents now avoid driving through Crestline because of "overzeal-ous" police work.

She should know those who avoid Crestline likely do so because of traffic congestion on U.S. 30, not because of any police traffic law enforcement. A bar owner complained that police are doing too many "walk throughs" at his establishment and that he is losing business. But if village residents are concerned about DUIs, public urination by bar customers, it makes sense to us that police spend time in bars until they can get a handle on the problem. Stepped-up law enforcement of this type is never easy to do, nor is it easy to accept.

No doubt some innocent people are going to feel stepped on along the way. But the long-term benefits appear to be worth it in terms of improved quality of life. Council wanted the police department to take back the streets and the sidewalks from lawbreakers and Davis and his officers appear to be doing just that. We suspect that once those who formerly violated the law get the idea their old behavior is no longer acceptable, they will either stop or move on somewhere else. Once that is accomplished, Davis and his officers can likely turn down the volume on their efforts.

Until then, we urge law-abiding residents, businessmen, council and Davis to get together to work out any problems. from the deal that Barak had offered at Camp David, he clearly resolved to build his state on the bodies of Palestinians, and those of Israelis, too. About 1,000 people have died in the last 14 months, most of them Palestinians. But Sharon, too, plays a futile game. For every significant terrorist attack, he responds as if by rote.

Israel clamps down on the Palestinians. It occupies this or that town. It assassinates terrorists. But the policy has been an abject failure. It has made Israelis no safer.

They die in discotheques, in pizza parlors, in shopping malls, on strolls and in cars and buses. The state is strong and the state is vigilant, but it is vulnerable at every bus stop to anyone with the fare. Ultimately, maybe, Israel may be forced to unilaterally withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza Strip and exist, safer than now, with the Mediterranean on the west and some sort of fence on the east. But if either that or incessant war is to be avoided, both sides will have to become de facto wards of the United States with the CIA vigorously monitoring their activities making up, if that's possible, for the faith-based Middle East policy of President Bush's first several months in which nothing was done. First, though, Arafat has to prove that he is truly the head of his government, that he will not tolerate terrorism, that he will not laud suicide bombers and that he will do as David Ben-Gurion did so long ago: fight some of his own people for the benefit of most of his own people.

Richard Cohen's e-mail address is cohenrwashpost.com. Back in October, The New York Times quoted an anonymous Israeli intelligence official as saying that Yasser Arafat "has not yet had his Altalena." The reference was to a ship a sorry vessel that sailed from France to Israel in 1948 and was sunk by the government of the month-old Jew ish state. The Altalena was carrying Jews. There is hardly an Israeli who does not know the story of that ship of Jew fighting Jew and how its lessons are lost on Arafat. Now, though, it is the Palestinians' turn to fight one against another.

Now is the time for Arafat to show that he is the responsible head of a unified government. That might in fact, that almost certainly will entail the killing of Palestinians by other Palestinians. David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first and almost mythical prime minister, understood the stakes the moment the Altalena lifted anchor and headed toward Tel Aviv. The ship was bringing guns for Menachem Begin's right-wing militia movement. Ben-Gurion wasn't going to permit it and, possibly in overreaction, he had the boat with its 940 fighters shelled.

Jew fought Jew and Jew killed Jew but, in the end, Ben-Gurion established the primacy of the state. In some ways it's absurd to suggest that Ben-Gurion has shown Arafat RICHARD COHEN what has to be done. Ben-Gurion was both cagey and wise. Arafat is cagey, but he will be called handsome before he is called wise. He is either unwilling or unable to learn from his mistakes.

When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1989, for instance, Arafat supported Saddam Hussein. He not only picked a loser, he put himself into the position where no one particularly not the United States owed him a thing. Now Arafat has done something similar. He did not grasp that Sept 11 changed the rules of the game. Sure, the war against the Taliban meant that Washington, D.C., had to curry favor in the Arab world and, sure, Osama bin Laden's sudden affection for the Palestinian cause meant that the United States had to prevail upon Israel to lay low for the time being.

But the war against bin Laden and the Taliban was couched as a war against terrorism itself. And what did Arafat permit? Terrorism, terrorism and more terrorism. The United States had to support Israel or gag on its own hypocrisy. So now Ariel Sharon has been unleashed. And now Arafat is rounding up the usual suspects.

But he remains, as former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak says over and over again, "a liar." No one can be sure that the terrorists who go through the front door of a Palestinian jail today will not go out the back door tonight. Arafat has played an oily, dishonest, stupid and yes barbaric game. He permitted, condoned and even celebrated the murder of innocents. He has soiled a worthy and just cause, Palestinian statehood, and he may well have lost control of his own movement in the process. When he walked away City afraid of lawsuits Just finished reading Howard Smith's letter to the editor, in the Nov.

27 edition of the News Journal. He stated he thought the commissioners were stonewalling on the AK Steel Corp. abatement issue and stated he thought the mayor and city council are spineless. I believe most people in this area would agree with his statements. It seems like the electors that are supposed to be representing the people are afraid of something, just like the accusation a few weeks ago in a letter to the editor from John Hess stating he felt the only reason Police Chief Harper is still on the job after all the complaints about him is because the city is afraid of lawsuits from the NAACP.

Could be true. It would fall into place with everything else that the city does. Sounds like the good citizens of Mansfield need to do some house cleaning. Remember the book about Mansfield, "Rotten to the Core." Seems sometimes the core remained the same only the apples changed. Linda Lewis Plymouth Cartoon offensive Your editorial cartoon last week depicting Christians concerned about the "Harry Potter" books as Taliban was offensive in the extreme.

I have been to Kabul and seen firsthand the brutality and cruelty of the Taliban. I have seen the women cowering behind burquas as they passed "vice and virtue" police armed with rubber truncheons. I had to temporarily purge my vocabulary of offensive words such as "Bible" and "missionary" because to utter them in public was to endanger anyone I was with or near. I have seen the desolation of a city ravaged by cruelty, oppression and tyranny. Only twisted thinking could consider evangelical Christians to be even remotely like the Taliban.

People who hold a Christian worldview believe that sorcery and witchcraft are inherently wrong because the Bible says so in many distinct passages. To treat such frank opinions as terrorism is both cruel and offensive. And I thought you guys were concerned about the First Amendment. Silly me. Dan Manningham Mansfield City deals with AK devil City officials, shame on you.

Everyone knew what you are, that is gutless. When you signed on the dotted line with AK Steel you sold your soul to the devil. When you signed, you took the rights of the citizens of Mansfield away from them and then you try to sweep it under the rug. Look what it got you. They are going to sue you.

I laugh every time you city council folks cower before the corporate devil. They even threaten the city and you cower in fear. Shame, shame, shame. County commissioners, it is your time to stand up and vote to take the corporate devil's tax-abatement away. Don't be surprised if they try to sue the county after you vote.

It is their tactic. If you do vote to take their tax abatement away, you can recoup millions of dollars. Maybe you could build that new jail and take some of the tax burden off the residents of this county. Don't be cowed by the corporate devil like some city officials. Thomas Pore Mansfield Share your views The News Journal accepts Letters to the Editor in several ways, including phone calls, e-matl.

tax and traditional mail. To call in a dial 52 1 -7432 and read your letter to a recording device available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You may e-mail your letters to churned 8 nncogannett.com Letters may be faxed to 521 -741 5 or sent regular mail to the News Journal at 70 W. Fourth Mansfield 44902. Be sure to include your name, address and telephone number so that we may verify the tetter and seek clarification Letters must be on a public issue and be 350 words or less How could soul search lead to Taliban? Bible Digest "You are the righteous God, Who searches the hearts and secret thoughts." Psalm 7:9 purpose the "why am I here, what is my reason for being" question.

Nor is it shocking that a young man with a restless spirit might not be satisfied with self-investigation, but craves an answer, a solution, an out. Nor is it surprising that the young man may buy into a new way of living if that new way seems, or promises, to fill the hole in his soul. So he changes his religion, changes his name, changes his residence, changes his lifestyle. It's an old story. The only twist to this tale is that American-born and American-raised John Phillip Walker Lindh, 20, found his place with, of all things, the Taliban.

It is odd because Lindh, a Catholic who converted to Islam and changed his name to Abdul Hamid, was supposedly looking for something sublime to latch onto. Reportedly, he was serious about peace and love and serving a higher power. He was a peace-and-harmony type, a purist, according to friends and family. The Taliban, on the other hand, is a delusional pride of brutes. They systematically and viciously abused and oppressed women.

They studiously robbed children of childhood, including that most basic staple, laughter. They gave the impression that Allah was a wrathful, vengeful, insatiable power who despised human pleasure and privilege. They chose the most savage ways to keep people underfoot and, supposedly, on the road to heaven. How, pray tell, did Lindh-cum-Walk-er-cum Hamid hook up with that crowd? His parents, stunned by their son's involvement, suspect brainwashing. That seems possible, if not probable.

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remains to be seen, however, whether the U.S. military will weigh that explanation. All they know now is that Lindh was one of the filth-covered, emaciated guys they rooted out of a riot-torn prison for Taliban captives in Mazar-e Sharif last week. All they know now is that he was hanging with the enemy. This situation should give some comfort to those parents who are fretting and pacing because their children have teamed up with pacifist and give-peace-a-chance groups.

You know who I mean: the young folks who dominate the demographics anytime there is an antiwar demonstration. They get ridiculed, shouted down, intimidated, labeled as communists or anti-American and military whenever they take to the streets. But there is nothing treasonous about young Americans preaching peace. The preservation of the world and its people is especially vital to them, considering that they have longer to go than their elders. Whether their protests are founded in naivete is irrelevant.

I happen to disagree with them in this particular case, but I see no treachery in calls for peace. John Lindh (or John Walker or Abdul Hamid) is another story. Taking up arms against your own country? That's a quite different thing. We should count our lucky stars that, for most young Americans, it's volunteering at a homeless shelter or chanting in front of the White House that scratches their activist's itch. One young man just showed how much worse it could be.

Write Deborah Mathis, Tribune Media Services, 435 N. Michigan Avenue, Suite 1500, Chicago, 111. 60611. Energy Credits Program: (800) 282-4310. Oho Department of Taxation provides information about and applications for this program.

HEAP Hotline: (800) 282-0880. Ohio Department of Development answers questions about the Home Energy Assistance Program. Information for Ohio: (800) 282-5393. Provides information on special events and festivals in the state and reports on camping and winter skiing conditions Provides free travel package Several surveys and studies over the past couple of years have revealed that American youth are very active in the volunteer world, the new generation's style of social action. That was great news and it flew in the face of what so many of us had surmised: that Generations and were all about a cod dled, pain-free, thrill-seeking life.

While there are plenty of that ilk, as there was for their parents' generation, the fear of total fecklessness was unwarranted, ac DEBORAH MATHIS TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES cording to researchers. Thank heavens. Where would the world be without young activists the ones who believe they should, and can, change the world; the ones who are willing to take risks the rest of us are too cozy to take; the ones with the energy for protest and demonstration? Where would the civil rights movement, the woman's movement, the environmental movement be without young blood? Imagine where the world would be if all its young people just toed the line, doing everything the way Mom and Dad did it, with no new ideas or no bold ways to execute old ideas? Life would be stagnant. And awfully dull So it's not so shocking that, despite growing up under American skies and with access to all the goodies beneath them, a young fellow might feel he's missing something. With no material deprivations to occupy him, he might have the time to ponder the higher Department of Agriculture: (800) 282-1955.

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