Editor,
Once again, someone completely misinterprets what they have read and makes something up to bolster their poorly thought-out case. No one, including W. Christopher Epler in his Friday letter, is asking for "good relations between terrorists and nonterrorists."
This is a complete non sequitur - Epler called for us to cut off the roots of terrorism, a wholly different matter. I suspect that Epler and I would agree that no quarter be given to terrorists - hell, as far as I'm concerned, idiot terrorists should be drawn and quartered, slowly.
If, as T.W. Davis claims in Monday's Daily Lobo, "it's true that most people (in the Middle East) are what we would refer to as normal - or sane," then the call for peace in that area is not, as Davis puts it, "ridiculous," or due to a lack of understanding of the nature of the struggle. If the majority is for peace, then peace is possible. The people of the Middle East are not the problem. Muslims are not the problem.
The point is that there is a deep-rooted historical basis for mistrust, based on prior actions, which leads to misinterpretations of our current policies. This is being used by the terrorists to fuel their insanity. I agree, let's support doing the right thing for a change - even if people like you cannot accept that the problems are in large part caused by the historical role of the United States and other Western powers in that region.
"The normal people who want to live normal lives" phrase includes the folks who live in the Middle East, so, yes, peace is not only possible, it isn't naive.
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Terry Muclahy
UNM staff
