It is right and proper to give our respects to those who have died in our wars. They all made the ultimate sacrifice and commitment.

What we need to guard against, however, is making wars themselves worthy of glory and honor.

Many believe, for example, that World War II was a just and honorable war. What I see in World War II is a monumental failure of Western civilization as a whole. Forty million people lost their lives in a war that could have been avoided, if a just peace had been made with the German people after World War I.

Perhaps it is time to honor our war dead by steering ourselves toward a world where working for peace is a serious commitment.

Perhaps it is time — past time — to establish a Cabinet-level Department of Peace, where we would work just as hard to establish peace as we do in preparing ourselves for war.

Roman Leverenz

Aliamanu

Veterans deserve as good as they gave

On Memorial Day, we remember those who have died in service to our country, and we also honor our living veterans.

It is incumbent on us to provide veterans with accessible medical services and job opportunities, and to remember their achievements and sacrifice.

As chairman of the House Veterans, Military and International Affairs Committee and as an Air Force veteran, I have worked with veterans to make their lives better, just as they have done for us.

In 2016, the Legislature approved measures to fund a counselor for veterans, provided $200,000 for the Vietnam Veterans’ 50th anniversary commemoration, designated June 27 as “Post-Traumatic Stress Awareness Day,” and approved a $200,000 grant for the 75th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

So as we celebrate Memorial Day, let us also support our living veterans, who deserve the respect and quality of life befitting their service to our country.

Rep. Ken Ito

House District 49 (Kaneohe, Maunawili, Olomana)

GOP platform won’t attract young voters

While state Sen. Sam Slom would like his party to be able to connect with young people (“Slom hopes Hawaii’s GOP can tap into new generation,” Star-Advertiser, On Politics, May 22), the GOP’s platform makes that a near impossibility.

With its narrow-minded positions on LGBT rights, women’s rights, immigration and other issues, it’s no surprise that young people increasingly are being turned off by the Republican Party.

Instead, young people are finding their home in the Democratic Party because we’re fighting for equal rights for all citizens, expanded college affordability, higher minimum wages, better working conditions, and more.

The proof in the pudding, so to speak, is that over the past few years, the Young Democrats of Hawaii has established chapters in all four counties and expanded its membership significantly.

Tyler Dos Santos-Tam

Alewa Heights

Rail should run straight to UH-Manoa

Everyone who commutes knows Honolulu does not have a traffic problem — when schools are out.

The rail transit system should go straight to the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Bus routes could run mauka and makai from rail stations into neighborhoods. That would solve our traffic problem — unless the goal is to make landowners richer at public expense.

Then you run it closer to the properties of the people who offer favors, kickbacks and campaign contributions.

Brett Phillips

Kaneohe

Don’t rely on data to rate teachers

In response to recently approved changes to teacher evaluations, the Star-Advertiser editorial board bemoaned the fact that next year “there will be no strictly quantitative measure of achievement factored into evaluations” (“Craft meaningful teacher evaluations,” Star-Advertiser, Our View, May 25).

This remark documents how deeply engrained the illusion has become that quantitative data can accurately and reliably attest to the relative success of a teacher’s performance over the course of a given school year.

No such data exists.

Case in point: A consensus has emerged among educational researchers that teachers play a much smaller role in student performance on standardized tests than is frequently assumed. Indeed, scientific studies have demonstrated that a teacher’s influence is minor (under 10 percent) when juxtaposed against factors such as home education and parental income level.

The Every Student Succeeds Act gives us the opportunity to end the destructive obsession for data that has dominated public schools since the onset of No Child Left Behind.

Andy Jones

Language arts teacher, Radford High School

McCully-Moiliili

Ploughshares Fund did not bribe NPR

Bradley Klapper claimed Ploughshares Fund is a “key surrogate” of the Obama administration in “selling the Iran nuclear deal” (“Group that helped sell Iran nuke deal also funded media,” Star-Advertiser, May 21).

This is untrue.

Ploughshares Fund is a nonpartisan, public foundation dedicated to reducing nuclear threats.

Our work on Iran was grounded in years of rigorous technical research. We supported negotiations to stop Iran from getting a bomb long before President Barack Obama took office.

We did support a network of respected experts — many of whom have spent decades in the service of this nation — that helped stop an Iranian bomb without starting another war.

Klapper insinuated that our $100,000 grant to the $300 million organization that is NPR in some way gave us editorial control over the outcome of their reporting.

This is pure fiction.

We remain steadfast in our support of this historic agreement. It cuts off Iran’s paths to a nuclear bomb. America is safer for it. Israel is safer. The world is safer.

Joe Cirincione

President, Ploughshares Fund

Washington, D.C.