To the editor:

While participating in the support-the-troops rally Wednesday evening at the Douglas County Courthouse, I observed the anti-war protesters at the counter-rally across the street with some disappointment. As a Vietnam combat veteran and later a member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War and participant in dozens of anti-war demonstrations, I would be the last to dismiss their concerns about the current conflict out of hand. However, I wonder if they are not being somewhat shortsighted and naive about this war. I wonder too if, for many of them, an automatic anti-war attitude has not become their knee-jerk response to any armed conflict involving the United States.

This war did not begin on March 20, 2003. It began on Sept. 11, 2001. This is simply another front and another phase of the worldwide struggle against terrorism and the sponsors of terrorism. Saddam is deeply complicit in his support, both overt and covert, of terrorism against the United States, Israel and the Western world.

To claim, as so many antiwar protesters do, that this is a pre-emptive strike against a regime that has not attacked us directly would be similar in rationale to saying that because there were no German Stukas and Messerschmitts at Pearl Harbor, the U.S. should have left Hitler alone and fought World War II exclusively against Japan.

Micheal Clodfelter,

Lawrence