Terrorist actions.

• Author: Burkholder, James B.
• Position: Letters to the Editor - Letter to the Editor

"Unmoored Words," in the October issue has stirred my memory (Editor's Note, by Matthew Rothschild).

Let's go back to basics regarding the Mideast. Britain and France following World War II had the perspicacity to withdraw their military forces from that area. Almost immediately the United States began its efforts to place our combat forces, preferably a division, in Saudi Arabia. Those efforts were rebuffed.

After our support for Iraq in the 1980s did not give us what we sought, we did manage to contrive a war to liberate Kuwait.

A part of that action was the successful overture to Saudi Arabia to permit U.S. military forces to be stationed within its borders.

With that concession we have reaped the whirlwind.

We have become the invader of its sacred soil.

You speak of holding the terrorists who attacked New York and London accountable for their own actions, but whose terrorist action came first? During the 1991 war with Iraq, we engaged in a "turkey shoot" of retreating soldiers...