Tom Clancy on U.S. Involvement in Persian Gulf

Clancy claims that America’s survival as a nation “has never been seriously threatened” by past wars. America, Clancy claims, always acts from consistently applied moral principles, and it would be consistent with those principles to go to war in the Persian Gulf.

In actual fact, America’s involvement in past wars, and America’s foreign policy in general, had more to do with greed, domination and knee-jerk anti-communist paranoia than morality. We have overthrown governments all over the world. We have put into power, or supported, some of the most brutal dictators of modern times.

Clancy further engages in revisionist history by claiming that it is our principles that “created our economy and our country.” Well, no. This country was built on land and with resources that we stole or took from American Indian nations. Our economy was built, at least in part, by the use of slave labor and the horrendous exploitation of immigrants. Principle had little to do with it.

He is right about one thing. Our government is attempting to apply the same principles in the Persian Gulf that it has consistently applied throughout our history. Just let’s not delude ourselves that it is “moral” principle.

LARRY SIEGEL, Hawthorne