Letter: Our attention should be on the homefront

Thursday, Aug. 17, 2006 | 7:34 a.m.

We hear continuing rhetoric from the White House about our efforts to find Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, trying to end the war in Iraq and preventing the outbreak of all-out war in the Middle East as a result of the terrorists in Lebanon against Israel. So far, our efforts have been futile, frustrating and wasteful at best.

Warfare in Middle Eastern countries has long been due to ethnic, religious, political and social differences; little has changed in thousands of years as it seems inevitable that the strife will continue long into the future.

How can we expect to be successful in these Middle Eastern countries where we have limited influence when we can't stop gangland warfare on our own streets? With the constant blare of headline stories about drive-by shootings, willful murder of innocents, rampant drug trafficking and running gun battles among gangs in our own cities, it seems that we don't have the national fortitude to do all that is necessary to end our own terror war by these gangs. Why is it that we can't seem to find major gang leaders and drug distributors as vigorously as we brag about rooting out a few Iraqi terrorists in Baghdad?

We need to concentrate our efforts and resources on controlling our own national civil strife against gangs, drug dealers and illegal immigrants or we will face our own civil war! Let's make our own country safe first, and then worry about policing the rest of the world.

Virgil A. Sestini, Las Vegas