Whoever penned the editorial asking the Afghans to renounce violence must be kidding ("The U.S. has condemned Quran burning; will Afghans condemn the violence?" April 5). Has that laureate been asleep for 10 years? We have been bombarding that unfortunate country since 2001 in a maladroit attempt to find the people responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks. Even though University of Minnesota Professor Juan Cole reported that 92 percent of the people in Kandahar and Helmand provinces have never heard of 9/11.

The eruptions into violence might have had as an impetus some civilian cowards in the Bible Belt burning a Quran. But since Afghanistan is the only place where this sort of thing happened, I think it can be safely assumed that it had more to do with the continued U.S. presence in there.

Paul R. Schlitz Jr., Baltimore