Wednesday, June 8, 2004

Extremist Muslims want to kill Americans everywhere

Dixie Eska-Thedra’s letter in the June 2 Citizen contained some illogical and very naive conclusions.

The great distance from Iran or Iraq to America has no bearing on their ability to harm America or Americans. According to that logic, we shouldn’t have gotten into the war in Europe in World War II: The Germans didn’t directly attack us.

That Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons on the Kurds and had weapons programs in development are facts that the last three American administrations all concede. To think that allowing these programs to continue would not end up harming the West is short-sighted.

Links between al Qaeda and the Iraqis exist. Links between the Taliban and al Qaeda exist. To characterize the war on terror as “chimerical” is to put one’s head in the sand.

Extremist Muslim factions want to kill Americans. They can and will use any avenue available to them to further their cause.

Finally, blaming “American cruelty” for the deaths of Daniel Pearl or Nicholas Berg or other innocent Western civilians is left-wing rhetoric at its finest. It suggests that we must have done something wrong for them to react like that. However naive it is to think that America does everything right all the time, it is our humanity not our cruelty that allows much of the world to live freely.

Ray Gravelle

Fayetteville, Ga.

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