Antiwar crowd didn't help

 By Kevin Mangan 

In his April 6 letter, "Laughable if it wasn't tragic," Nick Maync-Matsumoto tries to draw a parallel between the actions of U.S. President George W. Bush in Iraq and the Christian Crusades of the Middle Ages. But the letter fails to tell the whole story, such as the fact that within a span of only 100 years after the death of the prophet Mohammed (632 A.D.) essentially all of formerly Christian Palestine, Syria, Egypt, northern Africa and Spain were converted to Islam. Was this achieved peacefully by proselyting? No, by Islam's armies. In 1095, Pope Urban II launched the Crusades and called for the retaking of

Jerusalem, which was of little importance to the Islamic world at that time. Yes, the Crusaders committed atrocities, but had Islam not employed the sword in the first place, there would never have been the Crusades. Bush is not waging a crusade against Islam, in general, or against Iraq for its oil. 

The war in Iraq is not to remove weapons of mass destruction, remove a tyrant among tyrants, finish Bush's family business, or instill democracy in the Middle East. It is for all of these reasons. Get it? Three weeks into the war, it was clear that the only thing the "what did they do to us?" antiwar apologist movement accomplished was to cause more Iraqi deaths. For it not only emboldened Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his followers, but also deterred a fierce anti-Hussein movement from uprisings that could have ended the war sooner. 

With Hussein off his horse for good, you will now see clearly how the liberated Iraqis feel. The largely white, secular and Christian West, in particular, should be ashamed for not supporting the Iraqi people against this evil regime. I dare say that North Korean and Middle Eastern rulers have now taken note of just how serious the U.S. is in seeing change in the status quo.