Civilians

One of the first questions Americans asked each other after Sept. 11 was, "Why do they hate us so much?" For many, it was just a rhetorical question in the wrenching aftermath of our nightmare. Others took a real, if fleeting, interest in understanding the beliefs and attitudes that fueled the attacks. But I think most of us resented that question and had no interest in the answer, convinced there could be no rational explanation for the indiscriminate killing of any civilian population, particularly ours.

A civilian aircraft flew in restricted airspace Friday near Camp David in Frederick County, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, said in a statement. An F-15E fighter jet intercepted the Piper plane at about 4:45 p.m., NORAD said. NORAD said that the plane was out of radio communication and that it was escorted to an airport near Martinsburg, W.Va. President Barack Obama was not at Camp David at the time. The airspace over the presidential retreat was limited because he was scheduled to fly there Friday.

The debate over how the U.S. deals with suspected terrorists captured outside the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan flared up again last week when the Obama administration announced charges in New York against a Somali man with alleged ties to militant groups in North Africa and the Middle East. The move directly challenges a ban imposed by Congress last year that prohibits the government from transporting Guantanamo Bay detainees captured overseas to this country for trial in civilian courts.

On Wednesday evening, I heard a good portion of Sen. Mitch McConnell's Senate address, in which he lambasted President Barack Obama for bringing terror suspects into the USA for trial and punishment in civilian courts and prisons, rather than trying them outside with military tribunals and incarcerating them at Guantanamo Bay ("US detains Somali target," July 6). While the good senator repeatedly warned that this practice poses a threat to domestic security and gives undue "privilege" to the suspects, I found myself feeling just a little bit proud of the president's direction in this case.

Dr. Kenneth F. Spence Jr., a highly regarded Baltimore orthopedic surgeon who was a Vietnam War veteran, died Monday of leukemia at Hooper House Hospice in Forest Hill. The former longtime Columbia resident was 79. The son of a civil engineer and a homemaker, Dr. Spence was born and raised in Hagerstown, where he was a 1949 graduate of Hagerstown High School. After graduating from Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va., in 1953, he enrolled at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, where he earned a medical degree in 1957.

In her op-ed, Laila El-Haddad ("Palestinians betrayed by Judge Goldstone," April 18) displays the mind-set of someone who believes that the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas, is blameless in its purposeful attacks on Israeli civilians. While Judge Goldstone recently noted "that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy by Israel," he cannot say the same for Hamas. He states, "That the crimes allegedly committed by Hamas were intentional goes without saying — its rockets were purposefully and indiscriminately aimed at civilian targets.

Reading the commentary on Wye Oak's last album, "The Knot," and the new one, "Civilian," you might think there's little difference between the two. Adjectives like lush, evocative and brooding are alternatively used to describe them. But Jenn Wasner, the duo's vocalist and guitarist, says the new album is different in several respects, and especially in one: It's just better. With "The Knot," she and multi-instrumentalist Andy Stack overplayed the benefits of brand-new label representation, she says.

How is it really going in Afghanistan? In his recent testimony before Congress, Gen. David Petraeus reported substantial if fragile progress and conveyed a can-do attitude reflecting confidence about our prospects. Yet press reports and other organizations and individuals on the ground seem to grow more dispirited by the month. Are they looking at the same war? They are. But they apply very different standards, and so they reach very different conclusions. Soldiers are trained and equipped to fight.

When a brutal dictatorship massacres its own people with bombs and machine guns while the eyes of the world are upon it, the U.S. and the international community cannot stand idly by as the atrocities unfold. This week's upheaval in Libya brought thousands of ordinary citizens into the streets of the capital and other cities demanding an end to Col. Moammar Gadhafi's bloody, 40-year career of misrule; the government's response was to mow them down by the hundreds. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday denounced the indiscriminate killing of demonstrators and called on Libya's military to show restraint.