Dear President Bush:

It is necessary to point out, if only for the record, that your inaction to retaliate for the beheading of Nick Berg last month, has only emboldened terrorists to expand their range of operations from Iraq to Saudi Arabia, and to proceed to behead Americans and Westerners there, as well, combining those actions with murderous rampages. Yesterday, it was Paul M. Johnson, Jr.’s videotaped murder that was thrown back in our faces. Next week or next month it will be another American’s.

Briefly, the terrorists have taken your measure, and have concluded that your actions do not match your words. You call them “killers.” They already know they are, and do not mind being called killers. They are obeying the Koran, and killing for God, expecting to be rewarded in an afterlife. You profess that Islam is a “peaceful” religion. The terrorists know it is not. To the killers who wish to conquer the West, including America, you are a gullible infidel, a paper Crusader, worthy of contempt, all stance and no substance. Your willingness, for instance, to order our military to negotiate a “ceasefire” in Fallujah with armed gangs of killers, proves it. And encourages them.

Is it any wonder they think they can get away with murder?

May I ask what happened to the “axis of evil”? The WMD that the 9/11 commission is claiming did not exist, were secreted to underground bunkers in Syria. Pakistan, an alleged ally, is selling nuclear weapons technology to Iran, which is developing those weapons. China is also selling weapons technology to Iran, as well as to Zimbabwe, and building up its military to oppose the U.S. over Taiwan and the Pacific Rim. Yet, you do not even contradict the commission, which is accusing you of arbitrarily making war on Iraq for specious reasons, when Saddam’s intelligence and military organization was hosting Al-Qaida operatives connected to the 9/11 attacks.

Finally, you insist on keeping on schedule to hand over the reins of government on June 30th to a motley and “diversified” crew of religious firebrands and conformists, and expect it to stay in power, when their own police cannot protect themselves from attack. It beggars one’s imagination to think of what you consider to be “realistic.” Whatever it is, cannot, by your actions, be tied to the reality of the Islamafascist campaign against us.

One must also conclude that we have lost the war being waged against the West, because you will not fight it as it ought to be fought, as ruthlessly and uncompromisingly as we imposed governments on defeated Germany and Japan, and ordered our military to root out and exterminate the terrorists remnants of their fallen regimes.

If the situation in the Mideast seems an insoluble, no-win “quagmire,” you have only yourself to blame. Your “good intentions” are paving the way to more hell in America. The killers will be back; your policies have practically invited them to strike again.

You are not acting as a commander-in-chief should, but rather as a compromiser-in-chief. Your policies are guaranteeing our defeat.

Edward Cline