Leaving Too Soon

Editor: Nearly a generation ago we departed from Southeast Asia in a big hurry. We left behind a ravaged country and many thousand people who had depended on us but were then left to face torture, murder and starvation by a dictator.

Today we are leaving the Middle East in a big hurry. We leave behind a ravaged country and many thousand people who had depended on us but who now face torture, murder and starvation by a dictator.

Par for the course?

Langdon B. Backus.

Towson.

Sexological Ills

Editor: Regarding the sadistic, lust-murder of Rodney James Champy Jr., it may be correct to say that the "murder suspect's probation was botched" by the Division of Parole and Probation (The Sun, March 20). It is far more to the point, however, to say that the entire system of imprisonment and probation for sex offenders is a botched system.

It is impossible to cure a disease by treating it with imprisonment and probation. Sexual sadism, including lust-murder, is a sexological disease. It is classified, along with pedophilia, as one of 40-odd paraphilias. Many patients afflicted with these diseases seek early treatment before their disease reaches its pathological peak.

In Maryland, however, it is not feasible for a pedophile to seek treatment voluntarily. Maryland's mandatory reporting law dictates that the doctor take an undercover police role and, instead of treating a pedophile, report him to the criminal justice system. Rodney's suspected murderer, Stephone Jonathan Williams, lived within walking distance of the Johns Hopkins clinic for the treatment of sexual disorders. He did not refer himself to the clinic. So his disease went unchecked and unheeded by the criminal justice system until, for Rodney, it was tragically too late.

For the future protection of themselves and their children, the citizens of Maryland need a more rational biomedical and scientific approach to the sexological diseases of sex offenders. The annual cost of incarcerating sex offenders is staggering. A wise citizenry would demand that their tax money be more effectively spent on the maintenance of sexological treatment clinics, and the advancement of sexological research.

John Money.

Josh Kendall.

Baltimore.

The writers are director and research assistant respectively at Johns Hopkins' Psychohormonal Research Unit.

Power Politics

Editor: The following is in response to "power" as defined and verbalized by two notable public officials.

What is power and how do you get it? Power is an intangible, like the air. You can't see it -- you surely feel its effect. Can you really capture power?

Mary Pat Clarke, City Council president, says "Power is never given. It must be taken."

Gov. William Donald Schaefer warned the legislature "not to underestimate the power of the governor. The power of the governor has not yet been expressed." Are you trembling?

Mayor Kurt Schmoke, it was recently said, created a void of leadership by keeping a low profile on the redistricting issue. Could that have been an exercise in the power of restraint?

I wonder whether City Council President Clarke and Governor Schaefer have forgotten that an elected official is a public servant who represents the power of the office. The power does not reside in the person. Not yet, not in this country.

Could the similar combative leadership styles of Mary Pat Clarke and William Donald Schaefer indicate that they have forgotten ,, they are trustees of the public in the power they hold? Have they personalized their offices and is that why they wound and cut down people in their daily deliberations? Is that why they themselves sustain so many personal wounds?

Marjorie R. Johnson.

Timonium.

Black Marsh

Editor: Thank you for publishing Dan Lynch's letter concerning Black Marsh State Park.

Having visited Black Marsh on foot, on bicycle and on guided tours, I fully support the coalition's vision. More of Black Marsh should be fully protected than what is proposed.

It is important to remember that more of the facilities proposed for the park -- except the boat access -- are site dependent.

Parking, a visitor's center, food service and the education center should be located outside the coastal zone. This would allow walking, biking, shuttle or even trolley access to the natural and historical areas.

#Mary E. Thater Chetelat.

Baltimore.

Un-American

Editor: Realpolitik. Has it come to that? Are we now to be guided by this strange German word describing President Bush's statement that ours is a caring nation? Forget his wish that we become kinder and gentler under a thousand points of light. Forget his pretense of being an observant Christian.

Look rather to his actions: ruining Panama's economy, and, when that failed to result in Noriega's expulsion, killing as many as 2,000, mostly innocent civilians; toasting the Chinese leaders a month after Tiananmen Square; looking the other way when Gorbachev stomped the Baltic republics and when the Syrians marched into Lebanon; playing golf while hungry Kurdish children seek shelter from ice storms under tattered blankets in the mountains of northern Iraq.

The Sunday Sun says Realpolitik is wise. It is not. It is cynical and unprincipled. If America is a caring nation, Realpolitik is un-American. If it has any value, such value is, at best, temporary.

Bush and those close to him have great power and security. Those people whose lives they destroy have neither. When times change, and they will, for they always have; when Americans then must look to the rest of the world for compassion, we will receive none; for the world we are now creating, this world of Realpolitik, will have learned that compassion is not wise. Bush's new world order will then be seen as not new at all. It will be seen as the same order we have, unfortunately, always lived with. The one that says might makes right; that ends justify means.

We deserve much better from our leaders. We deserve much better from The Sun.

Stanley L. Rodbell.

Columbia.

Callous Realpolitik

Editor: Your April 7 editorial applauding President Bush's Realpolitik approach to the current Middle East situation as compared to Woodrow Wilson's idealistic one to Europe after World War I is a sorry and callous statement.

While the current policy in the gulf may be "practical," it is one which will generate decades of hatred by those whose expectations this country so wrongfully raised, and disdain and contempt by those whom we defeated.

Wilson's failure was not the attempt to provide the right of self determination to the various ethnic groups of Europe. It was the failure to recognize that having involved the U.S. in a war that had little to do with any legitimate interests of the U.S., Britain and France were little interested in idealistic concept, but only in restoring a balance of power, a containment of German power and buffer states against Bolshevism.

Wilson was an idealist. Lloyd George and Clemenceau better understood the concept of Realpolitik, as well as the time-honored practice of "to the victor goes the spoils." Promises made to factions in order to gain their support in the war were considered to be pragmatic conveniences.

This was especially true in the Middle East, an area to which Wilson seems to have paid little or no attention. Arabs, Kurds and Jews alike were given many promises in return for their support in the defeat of the Ottomans with apparently little intention to fulfill the expectations which had been raised.

Instead, Britain and France, under the legal nicety of an international mandate, simply occupied most of the region as colonial powers, drawing boundaries as suited their purposes.

Now the United States has fought a bloody and probably unnecessary war, restored a non-democratic regime in Kuwait, reduced Iraq to a pre-industrial state and abandoned those in Iraq willing to attempt to overthrow Saddam Hussein in response to Mr. Bush's exhortations to do so.

If the U.S. is going to engage in Realpolitik, then it must do so at the beginning, and not as a way to back away from the tragic result of its involvement. True practitioners of the art, such as Metternich, would never have fought a war which could have no acceptable political solution to its disruptive force.

To practice Realpolitik is to prefer negotiation to war at almost any cost, since the political outcome of war is almost never predictable.

We have sown the teeth of the dragon. Eventually, Mr. Bush's popularity may be determined by the crops which grow from those seeds, rather than from a victory in an avoidable war.

. Rex Rehfeld.

Baltimore.