Dear Editor:

There are numerous mistakes that Zach Wiita has made in his piece concerning the upcoming election. (Sept. 8, “Close your eyes and tell me what you see”) Just a few will be briefly addressed here, and at least one fully negates his argument.

First is the common, oft-corrected mistake that Sen. John McCain would like to keep troops in Iraq for 100 years. So, he must be corrected, as many a liberal pundit has, by recognizing that the next hundred years do not necessarily mandate a combat capacity for these troops (see Germany, Korea, and Japan for examples). Next is his faith in the Useless Nations/United Abominations (take your pick for the applicable moniker). This corrupt body has not done enough to keep rogue nations in line or keep peace in the world, and all the while, our so-called friends are diplomatically stabbing America in the back.

On diplomacy, as Mr. Wiita is a political science major, he ought to know that war is the result when diplomacy has been exhausted. Saddam Hussein thumbed his nose at countless U.N. resolutions and Afghanistan denied the U.S. request to give up Osama bin Laden after the 9/11 attacks; this is evidence that diplomacy, though a “powerful weapon,” is not always as effective as it needs to be and thus the “arsenal” must be revisited.

The multilateralism that defended America during the Clinton era as noted in the column is rather imaginary. Has the author forgotten the U.S.S. Cole attack, bombings of our embassies in Africa, or the first attack on the World Trade Center? What of the fiasco in Somalia and the NATO-approved Balkan incursion to “stop genocide” whilst ignoring Rwanda – how did the world see us after these ill-fated events? Had Bill Clinton had any semblance of a spine, he would have used his authority effectively and sought out bin Laden; it is entirely possible that the World Trade Center would not have been destroyed and we would thus not be conducting the War on Terror, which, by the way, we are winning, no thanks to the do-nothing, Democrat-controlled Congress, whom I congratulate for their record-low 9 percent approval rating (President Bush’s is three or four times that). Moreover, how can the writer suggest that McCain is not working to turn “dictatorships into democracies”? What does he think is occurring in Iraq? Mr. Wiita has thus negated himself.

Finally, McCain must be lauded, not chided, for his answer on how to respond to evil. To coexist with a malevolent nation would only serve to make that country more ambitious and encourage it to conduct its evil business. Rather, we can be certain that McCain will not make the mistake of former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and appease our enemies. The time has arrived for brave words and bloody knuckles and McCain is not afraid to destroy evil.

The world needs a hero, and it is certainly not Barack Obama.

– Jason Czehi,

graduate student in history