The first news items to flash across my television screen this evening were highlights of the Iraq-Afghanistan War effort. As I sat in my recliner listening to the news commentators, several thoughts crossed my mind as to why we are still fighting in these two countries today.
Then the memories of certain events and dates from not so long ago came to mind. Events I dare say that most Americans have forgotten. So I decided to list what I believed to be some of the reasons why we are involved in this war effort today.
First, there was the 1972 Munich Olympic athletes who were kidnapped and murdered. In 1979, the U.S. Embassy was taken over in Iran. Then there were the 1980 kidnappings of Americans in Lebanon. In 1983, the Marine barracks were bombed in Beirut. Perhaps you recall the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship the Achille Lauro where one American disabled passenger was thrown overboard in his wheelchair. In 1985, TWA flight 847 was hijacked in Athens, Greece, where a U.S. Navy diver was murdered trying to save passengers. In 1988, PAN AM Flight 103 was bombed. In 1993, the World Trade Center was bombed for the first time. In 1998, the U.S. Embassy in Kenya and Tanzania were both bombed. And then came 9/11/01 where four American airliners were hijacked, two were used to destroy the World Trade Center, one crashed into the Pentagon and the other was diverted and crashed by the passengers. In 2002, reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and murdered in Iraq. By the way, those who professed to follow the ideology of Islam perpetrated all of these events.
Yet after all of the documented evidence of such senseless killings, the world and its leaders continue to plead for tolerance, appeasement and diplomacy. If Islam is this peace-loving and tolerant religion, than why are they still killing each other today? Why are the voices of the American Muslim communities still silent?
Politically correct gestures and diplomacy have proved time and again to be meaningless. Has the world learned nothing from Hitler's rein of terror? The ideology of Islam is worse than Hitler's ruthlessness, in my opinion.
Then there is the axis of idiots such as Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Carl Levine, Barbara Boxer, Diane Feingold, Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Church Schumer, John Kerry and Bill Clinton and the list goes on and on. The collective stupidity of these self-centered politicians is destroying our great nation. Self-serving politics and terrorist-abetting news scoops are more important to these upstanding politicians than our national security or the lives of innocent civilians and soldiers. There is just as much blood on their hands as is on the hands of the terrorists in my opinion. I question their loyalty to America.
I would say to President Bush that our country has two enemies; those who want to destroy us from the outside and those who attempt if from within.
Rick Bradley
Warsaw
Editor's Note: This letter was edited to conform more closely to the 500-word limit as stated in our letters policy.
