Letter to the S.F. Chronicle

From our old friend, Maurice Englander:

North Korea is a greater threat than Iraq

Editor -- The United States does have real enemies, but Iraq isn't one of them.

With North Korea's acknowledgment that it has nuclear weapons, the garment of make-believe has been stripped away to reveal President Bush's lies about Iraq's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. North Korea also has a large army facing thousands of U.S. troops at the border with South Korea. It has a leader no less likable than Saddam Hussein. Will we threaten North Korea as we have threatened Iraq? No. Demand weapons inspections? No. Demand regime change? You can bet we won't.

We emerged from our last war with North Korea bloodied and dangerously close to all-out war with China. We won't go that route again. As to Iraq? What enemy? What weapons? What army? What delivery systems? Why war? We want the oil, but getting it will come at too high a price in blood.

Time to begin to deal sensibly and diplomatically with other nations, and not with threats of war that will cost us far more than the futile Vietnam War cost us. More and more it is beginning to look as though we have met the enemy, and that enemy is a reckless, war-mongering Bush administration.

MAURICE ENGLANDER

San Francisco

Thank you for that, Maurice. By reasoning that "because North Korea has nuclear weapons, Iraq can't have them too", you have demonstrated that you are impervious to logic. At the same time, you seem to criticize Bush for not using force against North Korea, even though you insist that the solution to all conflicts is diplomacy. Which is actually what allowed North Korea to sneak away with a nuclear bomb in the first place. So it's hard for me to figure out just what your point is except that you apparently feel that George W Bush is a bigger threat to the world than are either Saddam Hussein or Kim Jong Il.

The diligent Googler will find that Maurice Englander has a track record of making interesting statements. Such as a letter to the Examiner where he defends the right of people to defecate on our city sidewalks, and another letter where he writes that creating a Communist utopia is the only realistic solution to the homeless problem. And best of all:

Maurice Englander, a World War II veteran and San Francisco native, traded in his dog tags for peace necklaces, three to be exact, and denounced violence as a solution to America's war on terrorism.

"I'm a decorated soldier of World War II and I know that violence doesn't solve things," Englander said. "We should solve things in the pursuit of the people who did this, but not in the U.S. to unilaterally bomb countries. It will only create more enemies."

. Either he fought for the losing side in World War II, or he slept through the whole war and its aftermath. Excuse me, but it actually was violence that solved our Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo problems, liberated Europe from the Nazis, and Asia from the Imperial Japanese. And last I heard the people we rescued from the tyrants became our friends.

Once again, the Surrender Now! folks reveal their intellectual, factual and moral bankrupcy. The one good thing I can say about Maurice Englander is that he is a retired schoolteacher, so he is no longer filling the heads of our young people with illogical nonsense.

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at October 23, 2002 07:02 AM