To the editor:

The Saturday Column (Journal-World, Sept. 13) attempts to defend President Bush against growing criticism of his foreign and domestic policy loosely referred to as the “war on terrorism.” It does so by reminding us of the awful events of Sept. 11, 2001, shown yet again in the PBS special “The Center of the World,” the story, according to PBS, of the “creation, destruction and afterlife of the World Trade Center — the real and symbolic center of American global economic dominance.”

To make the point that we should wait patiently for American military might to eradicate terrorism, the writer repeats the now discredited arguments the administration has made for two years. He attributes opposition to the current war to a cooling of outrage over 9-11, inattention to the words of the president, partisan political carping and, most unfairly, treason by “giving comfort and encouragement to our enemies.”

Mr. Bush started out on the offensive and is now on the defensive due to his enormous mistakes of fact and political judgment. The Saturday Column asks us to support policies that have made a bad situation worse.

The emotions and errors that got us into the quagmire will not get us out by being repeated each anniversary of 9-11. We need a profound change of foreign policy, not the bogus “war on terrorism.”

Paul Fairchild,

Lawrence