Strategies to pursue

Let’s see: We want to stop ISIS and all the other extremist Muslim groups. There are briefly three things we can do:

1. Tiptoe away. (That’s what the last administration tried to do.) We should never have gotten involved. We cannot control what these sovereign countries do. This is basically a struggle for power in foreign lands. If we stay out of it, they won’t be able to deflect anger toward us.

2. Since we have made their business our business, we can support the ones that seem to be the good guys. Thousands of Muslims are dying in this struggle. Homes, families, whole cities are being destroyed. We can help.

We can send equipment, money, drones, medical and humanitarian aid, etc. And we can continue to quietly check anyone who comes over here in case they bring the terrorism with them. (That was what the last administration was doing.)

3. We can turn this into a Christian-Muslim conflict. We can break our promises to those who helped us, we can insult whole nations (in case one of them might possibly do something bad over here someday), we can demonstrate that we cannot be bothered to separate friends from enemies, and we can give tacit permission for the extremists in our country to unleash their hatred.

Then, when we have turned all Muslims against us and helped in the recruitment of terrorists, we can spend billions of dollars and thousands of American lives fighting their battles on their soil. Then what?

I am shocked and dismayed that our current government seems to have picked door No. 3. I thought we were more intelligent and more sophisticated and more humane. BARBARA TRUESDELL Hot Springs Village