Letters: KC readers discuss term limits, wasteful idling cars and Afghanistan chaos

Get them out

I have become increasingly concerned about what kind of nation we are leaving to the next generation. Congress is divided and shows no signs of reaching across the aisle in the search for common ground. We have lost stature among other nations. Our national debt is staggering, and if proposed legislation is passed, it will be beyond staggering for the next generation to pay down.

I do not pretend to have all the answers to these huge problems. I do feel, however, there is one good step forward we can take: term limits. If every member of Congress were limited to two terms, it would do away with career politicians focusing on what is best for their careers. Instead, the focus would be what is best for the nation.

- James E. Cox, Louisburg, Kansas

Let’s plant ahead

The Star recently wrote about a new local business that will have a “double drive-thru-window.” Why are drive-thru businesses proliferating in this country, where people sit in their idling vehicles to get their junk food, coffee, dry cleaning and other goods while spewing emissions into the atmosphere, as great swaths of our country are burning to the ground and experiencing unprecedented heat, drought and other natural disasters?

Pakistan has announced a plan to plant 10 billion trees. Why doesn’t the U.S. have a similar plan?

Every citizen needs to look in the mirror and decide how they can do their part to improve our planet. It’s the only one we have.

- Debra Korpi, Leawood

No embassy help

In March 2020, I was in Guatemala with four other adults and 14 youths on a mission trip. We received a notice from the U.S. embassy to get to the airport as soon as possible because the Guatemalan government was going to close the borders the next day. We made the five-hour drive and arrived at the airport to find it already closed — but on the evening newscast, we saw embassy personnel boarding the last plane out. Somehow, we got out six days later via a Canadian aircraft.

In 1994, my wife and I asked the U.S. embassy for help with a passport for our daughter we were adopting from a Guatemalan orphanage. Again, no help. Friends from Germany suggested we try the German embassy, which helped us get the passport in a few days.

And now Afghanistan. U.S. embassy employees were among the first to fly out. They are safely home while thousands of other Americans and allies are desperate to get out. The embassy compound and staff should serve as beacons of safety and comfort, guarded by the most powerful and expensive military force in human history.

Help from the embassy? Not in Guatemala. Not in Afghanistan.

- Martin Kanne, Kansas City

Lack of sense

Afghanistan continues to be a debacle. The Afghan army was a paper tiger. How was this not conveyed to our leaders, and why were they not prepared to get everyone out before our last soldier left?

I remember the $335 million diesel-powered electric plant in Tarakhil — which we taxpayers paid for when it was built under a 2007 cooperative deal with engineering firm Black & Veatch of Overland Park — that is barely used because Afghans can buy electricity much cheaper from neighboring countries. This is senseless, and probably not the only example of waste.

So should we not contact our congressional representatives and ask them what they knew and when they knew it to prolong this money pit we call Afghanistan? Anyone involved in this fiasco needs to be fired.

I do not blame President Joe Biden for our leaving. We needed to have done it years ago. I do, however, blame him for not realizing the Afghan government we were propping up would fail. Plans for withdrawal should have included worst-case scenarios.

- Ed Reed, Kansas City

This story was originally published August 27, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Letters: KC readers discuss term limits, wasteful idling cars and Afghanistan chaos."