To the editor:

In Kent Hayes’ letter (Journal-World, Oct. 7) that posed the question “When do we get our values back?” his premise is that torture and phone taps are recent outrages. I submit that these despicable practices are only the latest assaults upon the public.

In a system that creates a vacuum and fills that void through opportunities created by shocks/disasters or the perception of crisis, these are part of a process that feeds itself.

Here at home, using the pretext of fear and crisis, we have endured since 1980 the massive transfer of wealth, dismantling traditional pension and health benefit plans, and the annual raiding of the Social Security trust fund by politicians.

Beyond the borders of the United States, policies preventing a challenge to private property and capital using any means to achieve these ends have included coup d’etat, covert regime change, with a list of damages that include 35 unilateral interventions in this hemisphere, two million dead in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos among the most glaring crimes.

In 1975 the Church commission (chaired by Sen. Frank Church of Idaho) investigated, exposed and condemned crimes committed against foreign leaders deemed troublesome by a number of administrations.

Perhaps the means of prosecuting the crimes currently being committed may also be a Church-type commission, assuming of course that this ends with this administration – a hope that I share with Hayes but see as unlikely.

But only by rejecting U.S. infallibility and using an honest assessment of U.S. policy objectives and practices can people come to terms with what has happened in our name.

R. Calogeras,

Lawrence