In Wednesday's paper, a letter writer wrote in to the Open Forum an article entitled Let's quit fooling ourselves. I could not help myself from writing in and seconding his opinion. That was just an outstanding perspective and yes, the situation that the U.S.A. is in, is quite similar to Vietnam, where our military has to fight with one hand tied behind the back! We stand to lose too much at the cost of our economy at home. Except for a few countries like England and Canada, we have allies of convenience; allies that need to be bought off regularly.

Most of the world dislikes the United States. They see us as crude blokes, dollar-waving Yankees! And, most of us are.

It is time to approach our war on terror differently, because the terrorists, for practical purposes, have won, so far. They've had a serious hand in destabilizing our economy. Very similar to our misplaced war on drugs, the war on radical terrorism will not be won with the way the United States is approaching it. All we've done is incite more recruits to radicalize! All we done is stiffen the resolve of drug dealers to arm themselves and murder those who will get in the way.

There's no war to win as long as the United States operates like the world sheriff, unlicensed and lacking a real comprehension of what we're doing and how we're doing it.

Allen VanLandschoot

Baxter