Editor, The Herald:

ISIS, ISIL, or whatever the name, it’s the same old game in the Middle East.

The vast majority of “Middle Easterners” hate us, wish us dead and make no bones about it.

ISIL, Al Qaida, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, the Taliban, this one, and that one actually practically everyone over there wish us ill to the point of our death and destruction. Yet we continue with the delusional assumption that there is some magical solution that will negate their hatred of our very way of life. They hate each other as well, for no reason other than differing religious beliefs!

Imagine, if here at home, Baptists hated Methodists, who in turn hated Presbyterians, who Lutherans and Catholics loathed, as Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons vied for salvation by prerequisite destruction of all other sects.

The separation of church and state we enjoy as a precursor to our foundation of tolerance is unimaginable to much of the rest of the world, and certainly to the vast majority of Middle Easterners.

Make no mistake, religious conflict has always been about power. The sect warfare in the Middle East today is no different. The most disturbing common denominator, however, is their collective hatred of us.

Iranian children are actually lead to chant “Death to America” during school recesses. Bible ownership is punishable by death, even in states we consider allies. Should we blithely continue with our self-delusion or somehow recognize with abundant clarity that there is nothing we can do to placate, buy, beg, or deed our way into their good graces? They simply will not have it.

The unfortunate reality for the region is that the populace is either fabulously rich or desperately poor. There seems to be not much middle ground. The rich need to scapegoat to deflect the enmity of the masses. As the desperately poor need someone or something to blame for their plight, why not Christians in general and the United States of America particular?

We are the scapegoat they envy. Our way of life is unattainable thus reviled by pontiffs and clerics so the masses follow suit.

Living in our fairy tale land of the free, home of the tolerantly brave, we don’t comprehend the need for tyrants, but allow me to forward the premise that they are an absolute necessity for some parts of the world.

When we facilitate the demise of a Muslim dictator, total anarchy ensures, and believe me when I say that the biggest threat to our national security is the naive assumption that “democracy in the Middle East” will ever work to our advantage.” To allow them democracy is to support the rise of an enemy state.

The brutality of a Saddam Hussein is the only language capable of keeping order in that fractious fanatical society.

Is post Gaddafi Libya better off than before? Absolutely not! Would our embassy have been burned in Egypt had Mubarrak remained in power?

We must resign ourselves either to perpetual limited war, all out decisive war or to picking the lesser of the evils by making alliance with the most brutal of men in order to maintain some semblance of stability in that region.

If our moral compass disallows support of brutal dictatorships, war it must be!

If we bury our heads in the sand and hope for the best, they will force a fight at some point in time. A good analogy would be a hornets nest on your porch. Initially it is of little consequence. As the swarm grows, someone will get stung, then again. After enough damage is done we have to eliminate the nest.

We must carry the fight to the source and there must be enough resolve to eliminate the threat once and for all. Otherwise we will be revisiting the issue time and time again as we are now repeating the process for the umpteenth time.

I wonder if we have the stomach for all the killing necessary to resolve this threat to our peace, prosperity, ultimate existence and way of life.

F.S. Davis III

Amelia