Sowing New Bin Ladens Through a War on Iraq

Re “War Will Create More Baby Bin Ladens,” Commentary, March 2: Has The Times sunk so low now as to publish threats from our enemies? Khalid Khawaja is nothing short of being a terrorist sympathizer himself. It’s nice to see that he “acknowledges” that some of his “brethren” have committed violence against the United States. His halfhearted, smug apology shouldn’t be accepted by anyone in this country. I get a laugh out of these criminals who blow up our buildings and kill thousands of innocent people and then reprimand us for retaliating against them.

Yes, Mr. Khawaja, we believe in a separation of church and state. Most of the problems in the Muslim world exist because they don’t. The breeding of homicidal bomber squads is also our fault, according to this terrorist apologist. Khawaja makes it perfectly clear that he believes we’re the evil ones. On the contrary, the enemy in this war on terror has been succinctly identified and anyone here who believes this charlatan should visit ground zero in New York City for an immediate awakening.

I’m glad, at least, that The Times added Khawaja’s “accomplishments” at the end of the article. I see he was instrumental in bringing warring factions together in Afghanistan in 1993. For how long, five minutes?

Charles Reilly

Fullerton

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At last, a balanced account of the Iraqi war. Khawaja, a former Pakistani intelligence member, has summed up a positive course of action: “Some nation, or group of people, must put an end to this insane cycle of violence before the nuts on your side cause the nuts on our side to create a series of cataclysmic events.” As in all war-making discourse, we make the other side pathetic and uneducated oddities while we are God’s gift to the morally degraded. (The true God, mind you.) This intelligent and self-exposing commentary by Khawaja points out the futility of our policies, which will result in the creation of many more Osama bin Ladens.

A war policy that destroys innocents and children to get one madman that Arabs are confident can be controlled by their own community is no policy.

Ralph Mitchell

Monterey Park

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The president’s advisors don’t seem to have any understanding of today’s world. There is a saying that the winner of the last war uses the strategy of that war in the new war, and thus is doomed to failure. World War I was largely trench warfare. France won that war with the help of its allies, so it prepared for future encounters with Germany by building the Maginot line. The Germans lost WWI, looked at the whole picture and saw airplanes being used in their infancy. So they used the new weapons and a new strategy and conquered France in short order. The British and the USSR managed to hold off Germany until the U.S. came in with its overwhelming production capability and saved the day in World War II. The Cold War was largely a war of production between the USSR and the U.S.

But now we are faced with a new war on terrorism -- a new kind of war -- a war of hide-and-go-seek, and a war for the minds of civilians. We appear to be fighting it as we did WWII, the Cold War and all the other little wars. It is scary. What will we do in a few years when some of the new Bin Ladens, who are as smart as some of the young kids who bring our economy to a halt with a network attack, happen to have grown up with computers?

Richard Foy

Redondo Beach