In her letter of Sept. 23 headlined, “The voice of reason,” Marilyn Burgess takes issue with my calling Vietnam a “sideshow” in the Cold War.

She also questions our moral legitimacy in defending freedom, liberty and western civilization in Iraq.

She questions the commitment of the Iraqi people to their own freedom, neglecting the tremendous sacrifice in blood and treasure they are making daily in their fight with the Islamist terrorists in their midst.

My letter of Sept. 18 was addressing the dishonoring of our brave military men and women as well as their fallen comrades by the outrageous rhetoric of the anti-war movement.

Our president and commander in chief, George W. Bush, was called, among other things, the biggest terrorist in the world.

America was a country not worth fighting for and terrorists were “freedom fighters.”

The same anti-war protesters called our soldiers in Vietnam baby killers, murderers, torturers and mutilators. Our brave troops returning home from Vietnam were spat upon and booed.

Because the anti-war movement destroyed our will to win, Vietnam was lost.

In the greater strategic scheme of things, we could afford to lose the Vietnam War and still prevail in the titanic struggle against communism and the Soviet Union.

But no reasonable person today would advocate a similar option for Iraq since it certainly would embolden and invigorate the Islamist totalitarians who are literally after our heads and against the values we and most of the civilized world cherish so much.

Klaus D. Kuck, Lewiston