LIBYA, EGYPT
We need to react quietly, purposefully
There is a pain to the growth of freedom that often shows at the moment the released grasp their independence and think they know all there is to know, that they are strong enough and wise enough to do as they please.
The recent violence in Libya and Egypt is just that: a senseless opportunity to show that they don’t “have to” like the people who cared enough about them to help set them free. It is the risk we take — loving and respecting the idea of freedom enough to share it with others, while knowing it may somehow come back to bite us.
The people America lost in Libya, just like our soldiers and foreign aid workers in other dangerous places abroad, knew the risks and took them. We can and will study the possible security failures and lessons of looming threats, but understand that this is what it is in the big world. What we need is not political gamesmanship concerning events like these, but people quietly and purposefully working on them and the issues that drive them.
JEFF ANDERSON, ACWORTH
FALCONS STADIUM
Use taxpayer money on infrastructure work
If Mayor Kasim Reed and his associates want to build a $1.2 billion football stadium without taxpayer funds, great! Use taxpayer revenue for infrastructure projects like sewers, roads, education, the arts, fire and police protection.
Reed’s predecessor, Shirley Franklin, did not have a problem knowing what a mayor’s priorities were. Reed would be wise to seek her counsel.
GUADALUPE A. REYES, DUNWOODY
ELECTION 2012
President more than ‘community organizer’
The letter “World too complex for community organizer” (Readers write, Opinion, Sept. 11) initially criticizes the Democrats for pandering to gays and lesbians, calling it insulting the intelligence of us all. Securing rights similar to those given to the rest of us hardly strikes me as pandering.
Reading further, this piece generously concedes that the president is a wonderful husband and father, but his experience as a community organizer makes him unfit to continue as our national leader. I would note that his additional experience as a world leader, a commander-in-chief and our president make him infinitely more capable to lead us for four more years than the apparent alternative.
A.M. ZIMMERMAN, ATLANTA
MORTGAGES
Buyers should meet the qualifications
I just finished reading “Another view on mortgages” (Opinion, Sept. 12) and I was a bit confused.
To my way of thinking, a “well-qualified buyer” meets all the qualifications the proposed lender requires. This includes having the resources to produce the down payment — whatever it is. Otherwise, we’re back where the current mess began, with folks really stretching to assume major debt when they shouldn’t.
Could it be that those who profit from bringing in marginal purchasers to the residential market want whatever money can or may be produced — never mind what happens to the purchaser, should the financial structure collapse under its own weight? Nah — that’s ridiculous.
DANIEL SHELLES, AVONDALE ESTATES
