In today’s (3/5/8) editorial page of the HJ a letter appeared which is clearly a response to my letter to the HJ posted (2/16/8). The author is clearly a Leftist Demo who makes a number of unsupported claims and shows clear party blindness. Let me make it clear that I am neither a member of the Republican party and I have only voted for one Republican candidate in my life (which I have later regretted). I believe that the problems we face as a country today can be laid at the feet of both parties, but I personally believe that the leftist tendencies of the Democratic Party are more to blame than the Republicans.

            The authors point is that America’s values are what define this great country and not its wars. To me this is obvious, but I submit that our military actions are a direct result of our values. We are willing to go to great lengths of sacrifice to make the world a safer place for freedom and democracies, whereas I believe that most countries follow very selfish self interests in their foreign policy. Of course the author ignored the non military contributions which I mentioned like our speedy response to the tsunami disaster, while the UN dithered and the Muslims countries did next to nothing.

            He states “Only someone living in a bubble with Rush Limbaugh could imagine that the world owes this country gratitude for our current activities in Iraq.” Why do liberals always assume that people with my beliefs get them from talk radio? I almost never listen to Rush and my beliefs are obtained by considerable research and information which I submit the author is totally unaware (because he only gets his info from the leftist media).

            First, Saddam’s government attacked Iran with no justification, which lead to an eight year war costing at least one million lives and he was the first to use nerve agents against both the Iranians and his own people. He was committing genocide against the Kurd’s long before we ever began to hear about Darfur. Next he attacked another neighbor, without any justification, killed thousands and ransacked the entire country. When forced to leave Kuwait he signed a peace agreement which he then repeatly violated. It was also discovered at that time that he had a massive WMD program (which all intelligence agencies were unaware) and which posed a great threat to the rest of the world. Thank God Israel bombed his reactor years before or we could have faced nuclear weapons against our troops.

            The United States is directly responsible for bringing some form of freedom to over thirty million people in Afghanistan and Iraq. Great inroads are being made in Iraq and if we can keep up our actions, there is good reason to believe that a much freer country will survive which will have a direct impact on the rest of the Arab world.

Ø       Over 400,000 bodies of men, women and children have been dug up in the Iraqi dessert since we invaded.

Ø      One Iraqi human rights group claims to have documented the names of 1.2 million Arabs that were murdered by the Iraqi regime.

Ø      Captured documents indicate that Saddam had trained at least 30,000 foreign terrorists for actions to occur throughout the world the following July which our invasion prevented.  

Ø      There is direct evidence that since the first gulf war Saddam’s intelligence service engaged in numerous actions against the US and supported numerous terrorist groups.

Ø      He has been linked to the first World Trade Center bombing, the attack against the Murrah Federal building in OK city, possibly the downing of TWA flight 800 over Long Island Sound and also tried to assassinate a former President of the US.

 What really bothers me, both by Thad’s articles and this letter is the obvious belief in their moral superiority. Their party loyalty also blinds them to reality as well. His statement that “Conservative politicians have spent like a thief with your credit card, driving our economy into stagflation and degrading our reputation in the world to the lowest level in history.” He conveniently ignores that it is/was members from both parties in both houses who have spent our money like drunken sailors. And any true conservative beliefs in fiscal restraint. It is the RINO’s  (Republican in name only) who are directly responsible. Has he not heard the promises from all of the candidates, especially the Democrats, who are talking about spending hundreds of billions in addition if elected? It is the high price of oil more than any other factor which has lead to our current underpreforming economny.

      If any one is the most responsible for hurting our world standing it would have to be the liberals in Hollywood who produce films and TV shows, which are of the lowest caliber, morally and otherwise. The world for the most part gets its image of us through this medium. He demeans American’s concerns about the Gay agenda and abortion (which has lead to the “elimination” of at least 130 million potential Americans since Roe vs. Wade. Since the war on poverty began (the Great Society) we have spend at least one trillion dollars on programs for the poor. The result is that the percentage of those living below the poverty level is exactly the same as it was forty years ago.

      The most offensive thing to me about his letter is that he feels it necessary to quote scripture to us, as if we are not fully aware of what Jesus had to say about the poor. Jesus did not advocate increasing taxes to take care of the problem. His admonition was to open our hearts to those around us who suffer. His believe that conservatives are somehow cold and uncaring is unfounded as are most of his accusations. Exactly where has he taken the world’s pulse to determine that we are held at the lowest regard in history? I can remember when Nixon who was Vice President under Eisenhower went to South America and riots occurred where ever he went “Yankee go home!” France’s government is probably the friendliest to us since the end of WWII. Please show me which country had the more noble record. Is it Germany, China or Russia? Who exactly is he comparing us to? Is it Venezuela, Nicaragua, or maybe Argentina?

Please save me the moral lectures and inform yourself a little bit better for giving me another lecture.

Sincerely;

                              John Wangsgaard