The American Spectator

Reader Mail

Nervous Time

9.13.06 @ 12:01AM

(Page 3 of 3)

Border enforcement is, to the best of my knowledge, a universal value. It is the norm. Those who wish to depart from the norm are the ones with the case to make. They are the one's, in a rational world, who risk the moral scrutiny and suspicion of motives.

Those who want our immigration laws to be ignored are no different than those who want our drug laws, property laws, etc... ignored. It breeds contempt for the law, and I, frankly, am concerned about admitting millions of people into this country whose first lesson is that our laws aren't important. I'm willing to pay a few cents more for a peach to avoid that. I guess that makes me a xenophobe. What a world.
-- Scott Stambaugh
Murphy, North Carolina

Wow. If you want to find out which of your regular correspondents is eligible for Medicare, just write a letter bad-mouthing Franklin Roosevelt (as Patrick Skurka did) and watch who rises to the bait (as Pete Chagnon did).
-- Glen Hoffing
Shamong, New Jersey

Perhaps one of the most important or the recent letters printed was R. Goodson's eloquent message yesterday. Damn, did he (she?) nail it! Well said, and, unfortunately, too true. Worth re-reading.
-- J. Frost

HAVING THE STOMACH
Re: Jed Babbin's Five Years In and R.L.A. Schaefer's letter (under "Blundering Along") in Reader Mail's Remembering All Too Well

Numbers mean nothing in war except who is left, but for the record:

Casualties lost PER WEEK in WWII: 2,000. (Times 4 years, you do the math.)

Casualties lost in the first couple of HOURS at the start of the invasion of Normandy: 4,000. Several thousand were lost during a TRAINING exercise before the invasion. (Imagine what the French senator would do with that!!)

Casualties during the "Civil" War: 600,000; only 200,000 from enemy action, the rest disease.

Do we have the stomach to take such losses again? I doubt it and the left will dance in the blood to defeat us. Apparently however we have consented by default/consensus to accept such losses in the next terror attack rather than do what is necessary to stop it by taking the fight to the enemy and win. Several of my favorite authors who write military Sci-Fi prost that in situations like ours huge losses to the civilian population are as necessary as the military itself to force the majority of the population to get on board with survival. Wish like everything it was not true but in the historic sense they are more than likely correct. I cringe at the future we are creating for ourselves; it does however seem the human condition, fantasy and denial winning over reality every time. But then I am an old pessimistic trooper to whom the solution to every problem looks like a hammer...
-- Craig C. Sarver
Behind Enemy Lines
Seattle, Washington

Mr. Babbin is, as usual, correct in his assessment of the state of the world five years after the assault on the United States that led to the immediate deaths of nearly three thousand people and the loss of several thousand more since. The actions of Osama Bin Laden and his organization should have been a wake up call, a call to arms. Obviously it was not.

What has changed? A bunch of vicious, oppressive theocrats were driven out of power in a third-world backwater, yet the object of our manhunt has not been caught. A brutal, vicious dictator, who should have been deposed after invading a neighboring country, was finally deposed. But, the country remains in turmoil and the pressure that 140,000 U.S. troops were supposed to bring to bear upon a potential much more dangerous foe, Iran, has had little effect. The Iranian nuclear program and that of North Korea are still progressing, unchecked. Our foes are busily consolidating an alliance in plain view of the entire world. Hostile nation states boldly make threats to annihilate the US and our allies. And we do little to mitigate these threats.

The situation in the world is akin to an out of control boiler. Pressure has been building up for years. For the last twelve years, we have dealt with minor steam leaks and suffered small burns. Now we are faced with waiting for the boiler to blow, very possibly destroying us, or opening the relief valve and suffering serious burns. And it is becoming
increasingly evident that our leaders do not have the foresight, or the courage, to do that. So we will wait. And, eventually, the pressure of history will force action upon us. If we survive is still to be seen.

It will not matter who is in the White House or which party holds the Congress, for war will come. It has been coming for twenty-five years and the warning signs have largely been ignored. It will prove impossible to ignore the earth-shattering KaBoom when it finally arrives full blown. There is still time to avert the explosion, but dynamic action is needed to open the relief valve. Unfortunately, no one in a position of power, in this country, seems willing to face the future head-on and take the actions necessary
to stave off the explosion to come.

So we continue, waiting for something to jar us awake. Unfortunately, it fails to rouse our leaders for more than a few moments. Too few moments, unfortunately, to deal with the problem before it becomes a catastrophe. Hopefully, we will be able to revisit this discussion five years from now. I hope so, don't you?
-- Michael Tobias
Ft. Lauderdale, Florida

ROLE REVERSAL
Re: Ralph R. Reiland's Repression in the Age of Liberty:

The question is no longer whether Turkey will join Europe but, rather, whether Europe will join Turkey.
-- Danny Lemieux

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Islam, Books, Law, Military, Iran, NATO, North Korea, Communism, Immigration, Oil, Medicare