We have a duty to each other to stop the horror

To the editor:

"Gulag Archipelago" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn chonicles the torturing and killing that went on in the Soviet Union from the 1917 revolution through the late 1970s and may have lasted into the 1980s. It is unbelievable what Stalin did to his own people. Hitler caused 40 million people to be killed. Lenin and Stalin caused 100 million to die, according to recent estimates. No one will ever really know how many died.

A question cries out: Isn't there some force for good that could have stepped in an stopped this madness? No one did. I think what we are doing in Iraq today is what someone should have done in the Soviet Union during the 1920s to stop the carnage. We human beings have an obligation to each other to not permit one person or a handful of people anywhere in the world to cause so much catastrophic horror.

No one wants war. But sometimes war is the only way to stop a horrible situation. Otherwise, the blood of those who would continue to be killed would be on our hands.

It is maddening to see people who are so ignorant of what is going on that they blame the fireman who, at great risk to himself, tries to put out the fire instead of the arsonist who caused the fire. This is convoluted thinking.

DONALD G. SHELTON

Poplar Bluff, Mo.