To the editor:

I would like to respond to Fred Whitehead Jr.’s lament of “all talk and no action,” when compared to the World War II effort. His Dec. 9 Public Forum letter on ISIS action calls for some boots on the ground.

As one who recalls President Roosevelt’s 1941 speech to Congress and as one who later served in that war, there are some glaring differences. 1) President Roosevelt asked Congress for a declaration of war. 2) Congress made such a declaration. 3) A draft was instituted and able men were drafted to serve their country; 291,557 died in doing so. 4) Rationing of gas went into effect. 5) People bought war bonds to finance the war. 6) Kansas’ own President Eisenhower oversaw an income tax rate of 90 percent on the wealthy to pay for that war.

What I have seen in subsequent federal foreign adventures: 1) None of the above. 2) An increase in the national debt of about $3 trillion to go to Baghdad and create a human sausage-grinder monster very like the nine-headed hydra of the Hercules saga that sprouted two new heads, one in Afghanistan and the other in Syria.