We all want the best for ourselves. Why should the minority try to push us around and change the laws to support their lifestyles? Is that what mainstream media (tv, some talk shows, newer movies, most publications, etc.) tell us and we are to fall in line with their beliefs?

Never mind our ancestors or religious training that we were brought up with. Well this is the terrible plan the minority of our citizens are asking for - marriage between same sex people, drastically changing our military, active homosexuals in the boy scouts, etc. Never mind what we believed in 20 or 30 years ago. This is now 2013 and President Obama and so many of his followers are telling us to accept the changes that are coming our way. Sadly, do you know what the changes that Mr. Obama and his followers are demanding? Abortion and all that is related to baby killing in Obama Care, and the H.H.S. plan, stripping Medicare to help AARP, to help any who voted for Mr. Obama.

The 10 Commandments and all of the moral codes that we have for thousands of yrs., we have to obey! Let the minority in these matters have not and the majority have! If you would like to bring decency back, the Freedom Of Religion (1st Amendment), The Right To Bear Arms (2nd Amendment), tell your family and friends and write your senators and representatives to stay with the laws that God gave us and what is written in our Constitution and our Declaration Of Independence!

Sincerely,

Bruce Moorhead

Susquehanna, PA

How did the United States become the most hated nation on Earth? It wasn't easy.

It took our best and brightest minds, the lives of 64,893 U.S. servicemen, $1.8 trillion in the immediate costs of multiple wars, $4 to $5 trillion more for the lifelong care of tens of thousands of seriously wounded vets, and 60 years of concentrated effort.

All this to arrive at an end we never wanted. Here's how the most fearsomely powerful military machine in history became the world's most maligned democracy.

There was a time when America was a beacon of hope to the world, a nation to be respected, even revered for what it was, what it wasn't, and what others could aspire to be. But somewhere along history's time-line we lost our way. When? Perhaps it was 1968.

It was in that year that President Lyndon Johnson ordered troops into southeast Asia for a triple war on Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Seven years later, the last chopper lifted off the roof of the U.S. Embassy with the last American.

The cost: 58,220 U.S. troops, 3 million Vietnamese, 300,000 Cambodians, 200,000 Laotians, and $740 billion.

Johnson wanted to teach the Vietnamese a lesson; instead it was the U.S. that was taught a lesson---a lesson we failed to learn.

Five years later, the Pentagon poohbahs forged a silent partnership with Iraq in a proxy war against Iran. The goal was to retake their oilfields nationalized in 1979. Eight years later Iraq withdrew leaving 1 million Iranians dead and 500,000 Iraqis who suffered the same fate.

America then trained its cross hairs on Afghanistan in 2001. We were after a band of “terrorists”---more about that term later---who brought down the Twin Towers. None of them had any previous connection with Afghanistan. Nevertheless, we invaded an entire nation for a handful of insurgents.

The cost: 2,187Americans KIA---and counting---plus $321 billion and we're still there.

How many Afghan civilians were and are being killed? No one counts them.

Next it was Iraq's turn in 2006. Apart from the fact that the nation floats on an ocean of petroleum, there was no plausible reason to invade. The war devastated the nation and turned it into a land of perpetual turmoil.

The cost: 4,486 American troops, about 120,000 Iraqis civilians, at a cost of $785 billion and we're still entangled there, too.

Now the state department faces an embarrassment of riches: Where shall we go? We tested the waters with drone bombings in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Sudan, and Algeria, put troops into the Philippines to hunt down Muslims, expanded the border of NATO closer to Russia, supplied the Syrian rebels with arms, continued the embargo against Cuba, and moved into the Pacific to “contain” China’s influence.

All this while engaged in a 60-year-old cold war against Iran. Turning this into another unwinnable hot war will be the crowning achievement of incompetency, if not criminality.

The prize is still the oilfields that the West lost as a consequence of the Iranian revolution. Fortunately, the precarious state of the U.S. economy makes this Mideast misadventure highly unlikely.

Perhaps this interregnum will provide time to reflect on our militancy.

It is, after all, the U.S.'s covert, overt, and outright military interference in the affairs of Mideastern nations that have created what we call “terrorists.” It is a preposterous term.

Does a “terrorist” risk or sacrifice his life by burying an IED, participating in a green on blue attack, ambushing an American convoy, donning a suicide vest, or piloting a hijacked airliner into the Twin Towers because he is a terrorist and that's just what terrorists do? Absurd.

These acts are desperate reactions to our meddling and the death and destruction wrought by the U.S. military. “Terrorists” is a propagandist label. To others in their land they are freedom fighters, martyrs, and heroes retaliating in the only way they can.

Are their acts, then, less horrific because of their motivation? Not at all. In war, everyone gets their hands dirty---including the United States.

Until we admit that the enemies we have are the enemies we have made, it would at least show some measure of honesty by replacing the Statue of Liberty's torch, a torch symbolizing enlightenment, with an M-16 assault rifle held high, inscribed with, “In This We Trust.”

Sincerely,

Bob Scroggins

New Milford, PA