Dear Editor,

Galactic invaders in H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds succumbed to a tiny earthly “bug.” Pick your fights carefully, because the outcome may not be in your hands.

Viet Nam was lip service to the “right,” while civil rights legislation was passed. It was after Selma and Watts when the war became an entity unto itself, that LBJ didn’t have the stomach for it. It was “The Right” that had to pull out after conceding defeat. They owed this unpleasant humiliation to the country for being so far off base.

It all comes back to Walter Lippman. He maintained that communism could only flourish in undeveloped, third-world countries. So the premise of a domino effect resulting in communist world domination has been proven false. Yea, Walter!

Viet Nam fell to the communists. If a commerce-oriented party had the courage of their convictions, American boys wouldn’t have to die for isolationist views. Democracy would flourish from Argentina to Russia to southeast Asia. Viet Nam is now at peace and has even hosted segments of that American game: The Amazing Race.

Today, we follow that Rogers and Hammerstein lyric out of South Pacific: “You’ve got to be taught to love and hate. … You’ve got to be carefully taught.” Ergo the World Trade Center. So how far will we fall, even when we realize that this time we are pawns in a “fundamentalists’ world”? We are like the cartoon of the ostrich with its head buried in the sand. The caption below said: “You can’t see me.” Ergo the World Trade Center.

We will not go to war over what would otherwise be preventable causes. We will go to war over violated principals. The question is, who sets them and how are these binding? That is the question of our age. Maybe the old mantra “Make love, not war” should be changed to: “Make peace, not war.”

We should go to war; but, it should be in the right direction. They may find it just too easy to follow those damned fundamentalists.

It’s ancient: the ability to put one’s self in another’s position to know what it’s like to be there. The United Nations was a first step toward this principal in world consciousness. If there are those who are not bullish enough to believe this was the right step, who could so much as figure out the next? A half cocked, emotional premise that results in a protracted war is unacceptable. It plays to the enemy’s advantage.

The current situation’s root causes have not been exposed. Once they are, only then can a military collation with future planning mark success. Refer back to World War, Part II.

Fred Stewart

Glenwood Springs