‘Smart people, not smart bombs’ needed

Re “Navigating the ‘human terrain,’ ” Opinion, Dec. 7

Max Boot can teach the Iraqi press a thing or two about planting Pentagon puff pieces in legitimate news journals. His breathless account of a Marine program to increase cultural awareness among officers is a blatant example of Rumsfeld-era media manipulation. It certainly does not belong in the Opinion section. All good propaganda begins at home, I guess.

SEAN K. SMITH

Los Angeles

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Boot cites a wartime need for “smart people, not smart bombs” plus Americans “familiar with foreign languages and cultures.” He writes about the Marines’ new Center for Advanced Operational Culture Learning that teaches Marines “peacekeeping, nation building and related tasks.”

I suggest President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney immediately attend these classes in lieu of their usual defensive and self-serving speeches to Navy plebes, the American Legion, Mongolians, Rush Limbaugh, et al. It’s obvious that Bush needs to totally rethink his war “plan” and, as the article suggests, not to continue being “dominant but irrelevant.”

JOHN HOLMSTROM

Hollywood

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Ask most any serving officer and he/she will tell you that the noncommissioned officer is the backbone of the service. This is especially true of the Marine Corps. Yet Boot seems to think that gunny can’t do two things at once -- like being weapons proficient and learning a foreign language. I, for one, am under the illusion that a career NCO can put his M-16 through the paces while speaking Arabic in Baghdad.

Unless things have changed recently, the NCO is the person on the ground and most at the point. So let’s give credit where it’s due. The NCO in modern warfare needs to be just as smart and language capable as the officer who backs him/her up. Get real, Max. This isn’t your granddaddy’s Marine Corps.

DAVID STRAUSS

Arcadia