http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/27/opinion/l27iraq.html

To the Editor:

Frank Rich’s Dec. 24 column, “Yes, You Are the Person of the Year!,” cites several methods Americans use to avoid thinking about the Iraq quagmire. Yet he doesn’t address a major reason for the avoidance: What else can they do but “seek out any escape hatch”?

Patricia Woodward, a psychologist, reported in a 1946 study that many Americans were worried about an atomic war but did nothing about it, presumably, she concluded, because they didn’t know what constructive action to take.

Americans voted disengagement and instead are about to witness enlarged engagement. What can they do?

Like the veterans’ Bonus Army of 1932, should they encamp in Washington until Congress finally takes action? Like the labor activists of the 30s, should government employees engage in strikes?

Like the civil rights and peace activists of the 50s to the 80s, should they demonstrate in the streets and on campuses?

These nonviolent methods of expression, as American as apple pie, are healthier and more effective than escape. Milton Schwebel

New Brunswick, N.J., Dec. 24, 2006

The writer, emeritus dean of the Graduate School of Education, Rutgers University, is a former editor of Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology.

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To the Editor:

Re “District by District, Shiites Make Baghdad Their Own” (front page, Dec. 23):

What the Shiites are doing is creating facts on the ground.

What is taking place in Iraq is a variation of the ethnic cleansing that happened in the former Yugoslavia, a population exchange by violent means.

The American forces in Iraq are apparently unable to prevent this from occurring. But the article states that Shiite leaders are determined to prevent the massacre of Sunnis fleeing their homes.

An example cited was how an Iraqi Army unit helped 180 Sunni families (by the Americans’ count) fleeing Huriya into trucks and brought them to a Sunni enclave.

It seems that besides the choices the United States will have to make regarding Iraq — “go big, go long or go home,” as in the Pentagon phrase — is also the choice of taking responsibility for ensuring a relatively peaceful population exchange between the Shiites and the Sunnis. This would serve America’s long-term interest. Frank Shatz

Williamsburg, Va., Dec. 24, 2006

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To the Editor:

The argument that we should send a surge of new troops to Iraq because we’ve tried everything else amounts to a call for human experimentation with our troops as lab animals.

Unless someone in the government can present a detailed description of what these new forces will do — and how, when and why they will do it — this effort indicates a moral bankruptcy. James M. Doyle

Brookline, Mass., Dec. 24, 2006

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To the Editor:

Rather than luring or conscripting more young people into the military and spending incomprehensible amounts of money to arm them, we should do what is right and rational: sit down with our “enemies,” without preconditions, and talk.

The belief that a strong military can protect us is delusional. The true enemies facing us — religious fundamentalism, environmental degradation, pandemic diseases, poverty, unsustainable methods of energy and agriculture production and violence — are global issues. There will be no military solutions to any of them.

The last thing the world needs is more soldiers sworn to kill for their dictators, theocrats, absolutists and commanders in chief.

Jeffery Blackwell

Delafield, Wis., Dec. 22, 2006

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To the Editor:

Any serious reconsideration of our strategy in Iraq must go far beyond that country. There must be a change in America itself.

Up to now, the burden of the war has been borne by those fighting and their families. To be credible, the president must also demand sacrifice from the rest of us. At the very least, a war tax should be imposed so that we pay for it, rather than passing the cost on to our children.

Anything less would show the president as uninterested in prosecuting the war and singly interested in trying to protect his ego.

Martin G. Evans

Toronto, Dec. 24, 2006

And it has analogue?

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