Skip to main content
letters

Letters to the Editor should be exclusive to The Globe and Mail. Include your name, address and daytime phone number. Try to keep letters to fewer than 150 words. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. To submit a letter by e-mail, click here: letters@globeandmail.com

..............................................................................................................

TPP: Sign(ed), seal(ed)?

Barack Obama is pressuring Canada for quick approval of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (Obama Says Trudeau Will Sign TPP – Nov. 20). Does that mean he doesn't want the PM to take seven years to make a decision? I guess the President thinks it's a no-brainer.

Marie Marchand, Vernon, B.C.

.........

Paris, always Paris

For those who fear their image of Paris is forever shattered by recent events, I would say: Fear not (Memories Of The Bataclan – Life & Arts, Nov. 19).

When I first went to Paris in 1954, I stopped for lunch in a small place on Rue de la Harpe, just off the Boul Mich. It was crowded as the food was good (Algerian) and very cheap. As I nosed into my first plate, a man burst into the room and with a great cry stabbed the man at the table next to me. The body was dragged to the sidewalk and a new customer seated at the now vacant place by the time police arrived to deal with yet another violent Algerian death.

Later that week, there were two bodies on the street in front of my hotel. When I expressed some alarm, the hotel porter said that if I was interested in bodies, I should go down to the bridge and watch the morning recoveries in the Seine. Hundreds died on the streets in those days.

The Paris I came to know as a student in the early 1950s was a violent, threatened place, but it overcame that. And it will again.

Paris is a wonderful, vibrant city that reinvents itself with each new generation. It will always triumph. As Charles Trenet sang, Paris will always be Paris.

Stuart Smith, Ottawa

.........

Refugee concerns

I believe most Canadians understand that most Muslims living here are law-abiding citizens with no terrorist intent. But that doesn't negate concerns about the promotion and creation of potential terrorists from within the Muslim community, as has already occurred (As Racism Taints Debate, Nenshi Asks Canadians To Stand As One – Nov. 19).

Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi is wrong to say all terrorists so far have been male. There are repeated reports of women and children who have been brainwashed into self-immolation and the murder of innocents.

While the current Syrian refugee situation is a humanitarian crisis (seemingly ignored by the wealthy Muslim countries) of huge proportions, earlier remarks attempting to link it to the Vietnamese boat people immigration ring hollow. Was the population of South Vietnam taught from birth to hate the Western/Christian world and view them as the enemy of specifically Syria and the Muslim world?

Does the Western community not have legitimate reasons to have concerns about a large influx of a people who have been taught to resent and hate the Western culture and call for its destruction? After all, the creation of this crisis has been brought about by the difference in opinion as to who is a true Muslim (Islamic State versus Sunni versus Shiite versus Boka Haram, etc.) and which despot should be the leader of their various communities.

Are the people who dare to ask these questions really bigots and racists or are these legitimate concerns?

Tom Weinberger, Toronto

.........

Naheed Nenshi is the most Canadian Canadian this country may ever know. May we as his countrymen heed his example. May the world hear his plea.

Lyle Clarke, Whitby, Ont.

.........

Afghanistan myth

Your editorial Have We Learned From Our Failures? (Nov. 18) maintains that "Over the past decade and a half, the Western world went to war in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. The first two were full-scale invasions; the last involved an extensive bombing campaign." Not so: In reality, the intervention in Afghanistan in 2001 was very similar to what happened in Libya in 2011.

Before the fall of Kabul to the insurgent Afghan Northern Alliance in November, 2001, and the subsequent collapse of the Taliban regime, there were no foreign regular combat formations in Afghanistan.

The Northern Alliance did receive substantial American air support (and assistance from special forces, both U.S. and British); that, however, is no invasion.

In fact, the air support given in October and November, 2001, to the Northern Alliance is a very close analogy to NATO's support of the anti-Gadhafi forces in Libya. Yet no one – your editorial as an example – refers to an invasion of Libya, while the myth of an invasion of Afghanistan lives on. Why?

Mark Collins, fellow, Canadian Global Affairs Institute

Interact with The Globe