Clash of cultures

Re “Friends -- and enemies,” editorial, April 25

Your editorial says a “poll” has determined “that the struggle for Muslim hearts and minds may already be lost.” May I remind you that one cannot lose what one never had.

A culture that teaches children to be suicide bombers, believes there will be virgins waiting in heaven for men only, mutilates the genitals of women, and whose people danced in the streets when 3,000 people died on 9/11 has nothing in its people’s hearts or minds that I, a civilized person, want to gain.

GREG HALL

Dallas

*

Your editorial is right on the mark. Its central thrust leads to the conclusion that the grievous U.S. losses in the Iraq misadventure served not American interests but those of Al Qaeda, as America grew weaker while Al Qaeda prospered. With the Iraq invasion, an Al Qaeda shattered in the Afghanistan war was able to make an astounding comeback.

Iraq provided a superb platform for Al Qaeda’s jihadists to kill U.S. soldiers and provoke sectarian violence.

We must cut our losses and get out. Al Qaeda will then become the foreign interloper, and Iraq’s leaders will be forced to confront their sectarian conflicts.

Once out, our resources could be used to quell instead of aid Al Qaeda’s terrorist movement.

BENJAMIN SOLOMON

Evanston, Ill.