Martin Koppel, Las Vegas

Thu, Mar 27, 2008 (2:05 a.m.)

Regarding Ken Anderson’s Sunday letter to the editor, headlined “Amazingly, some still support President Bush”:

Many Americans did not want to get involved in World War II, the “European war.” It took Pearl Harbor to make Americans understand that we had to. After the loss of 400,000 Americans in that war, many are still willing to allow an enemy like al-Qaida to gain enough power to force us into another world war.

The enemy we face has already proved itself dangerously effective by defeating the Russian military and carrying out the greatest single attack on this country with nothing more than a few men with box cutters. Sept. 11 was the Pearl Harbor of the new millennium and the beginning of World War III.

President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain are all trying to tell us we must deal with the terrorist jihad now or deal with it later, when it will be much more costly in American lives, just as World War II was.

America must end its political divisiveness and become dedicated to stopping the terrorist jihad. History has proved there is no other acceptable option if we wish to avoid the horror and death of the next world war.

However we got there, Iraq has become the focal point. We must continue our efforts to stabilize Iraq or we will leave a vacuum that the terrorists will use as a power base to wage World War III. May God bless America in its efforts.