Radical teaching is commonplace

To the editor:The recent letter from Robert Polack is, in my view, a textbook example of the naivete of so many today. They cite the large number of casualties in Iraq. More than 3,700 innocent babies are killed each day in this country, over 93 percent of which are killed for convenience. Where is Polack's outrage?

His theory that getting out of the Middle East will reduce terrorism proves he knows little about Wahhabism, the radical Islamic teaching that has a sole purpose of destroying the free world and making it an Islamic theocracy. This teaching is commonplace in many mosques in America today. Oil has nothing to do with it.

I fail to see how our enemy had less hostility toward us in 1979 or in the almost a dozen terrorist attacks on America and American interests between 1979 and 2001. Those lacking reality-based vision are those like Polack who choose to keep their heads in the sand and ignore the real world around them.

History has a strange way of repeating itself. For example, many said if Hitler was left alone, he would not bother us. The best predictor of the future is a working knowledge of history. I will say again: Facts can be troublesome, especially when you are blinded by ideology.

BILL PALMER, Bakersfield, Calif.