THE DAILY STANDARD welcomes letters to the editor. Letters will be edited for length and clarity.

*1* I remember Ernest LeFever as a good and decent man and an engaged Christian, but I haven't seen him in 40 years and don't recall the conversation he recounts from that period in his latest piece. However, I didn't then or now think In the Name of America a strident book, and I probably didn't review it because I was wrestling with the issues it raised and hadn't resolved them in my own mind. One reason I opposed the invasion of Iraq all these years later is because, as I have said publicly, I saw the Bush administration making many of the same mistakes we had made in the Johnson Administration. There are probably many differences between Ernie and me these days, but one would seem to be that he hasn't changed his mind over 40 years, and I have.

By the way, unlike the recent Richard Perle documentary on PBS, which once again provided the neoconservative arguments for bringing peace and democracy to Iraq, there were no public funds in my report Buying the War. And I don't recall THE WEEKLY STANDARD protesting Perle's trip to the public trough.

--Bill Moyers

*2* I was struck by the keen insight of Ernest Lefever's article on African independence, which recently appeared in THE DAILY STANDARD. Having served as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer in three African nations, my experience leads me to agree with his observations. In particular, his description of comrade Mugabe was spot on, albeit a little too gentle for a man who has impoverished one of the richest countries in Africa, directly contributed to the destruction of a functioning judiciary, police force, and education system, and caused the deaths of thousands. In a cafe in Harare in 1998, years after the Berlin wall came down, I remarked that it was breathtaking that policy makers did not see Mugabe for what he was, a tribal-based dictator concerned only with staying in power for the benefit of himself and his own. That he had draped himself in the mantle of communism was made obvious by the official press referring to him as President Comrade Mugabe and the party's executive committee as the Politburo. But even that affiliation was a sham--the man was about power for himself and those close to him, nothing more.

In many visits there, I realized what a lovely place it was. I got to know Roy Bennett, a white farmer who won over 60 percent of the votes in his district when he ran for Parliament as an independent. His district included 60,000 voters of whom about 200 were white. Alas, the voice of the people had to be stifled, and Mugabe and his coterie of thugs later had Bennett imprisoned and forced from office.

--Ed Stafford

*3* That was a sensational article by Ernest W. Lefever on African independence. Frankly, I never thought I would read an article so "spot on" in a U.S. publication.

I was an officer commanding African soldiers in the Rhodesian Army for the last 37 months of the Rhodesian Bush War. President Carter had worked to topple Rhodesia and install Mugabe. And yet, so few caught the irony of President Carter collecting his Peace Prize in Oslo in 2002, right at the height of the farm seizures and killings in Zimbabwe.

The Rhodesian Bush War ended a decade before the Berlin Wall crumbled. We saw that war as a classic Cold War chapter, as did our African soldiers.

I have often wondered if Carter's ambassador to the UN, Andrew Young, ever sat down with Mugabe's Chinese handlers (circa 1979) and hammered out Zimbabwe's future.

--Joseph Columbus Smith

*4* Before Bruce P. Jackson goes too far in running down democracy in Central Europe and the Ukraine, lets look at Western Europe. Italy has experienced 55 different governments since 1945, and just look at the political mess and corruption in France and Germany.

One of the main reasons for the current political mess in the Ukraine is the unwillingness of the EU to offer the hope of membership to that country. If the EU had made such an offer, then there would be no crisis today.

But by refusing membership to the Ukraine, the totalitarian forces within that country have been strengthened immensely, and the Ukrainian people have been deprived of hope for their children's future.

Brussels does not have the moral right to deny the Ukraine entry into the Union (unless, of course, the country fails the 35 chapter process). Ukrainians are as European as the French or Germans. To leave the Ukraine without access to Europe would be a criminal act.

--Larry Houle

*5* This whole notion of letting the CIA investigate global warming, as described by Michael Tanji, is horribly misguided and distracts from the serious work that the intelligence community needs to be doing. Still, there could be some useful research done by the CIA in this area--although it would be unlikely to make the program's supporters very happy.

For instance, the CIA might look into how the detonation of several nuclear bombs would affect global warming. Or, perhaps, expose what covert actions other nations are taking to protect themselves from this great danger--though I suspect they'd have little to report.

--Sammy Finkelman