Armed force backs up foreign policy

Re: "America headed in the right direction," Your Opinions, Oct. 17.

The writer seems to laud the European majority who believe that force should never be used to achieve justice. He goes on to state how good he felt in the 1960s about America's efforts to help Europe recover after World War II.

Perhaps if he had been in Europe from 1939-45, he would have had a little different opinion about the necessity of using force to correct injustice. Had American men and women not fought and died to correct the injustice of Nazi oppression, there would have been no Europe left to rebuild in the 1960s.

It would be well for the writer, our European friends and all who think like them, to read the World War II memoirs of Winston Churchill, in which he bemoans the naivete of his country's leaders in attempting to appease Hitler prior to that horrendous conflict.

Churchill recognized that "no foreign policy can have validity if there is not adequate force behind it, and national readiness to make the necessary sacrifice to produce that force."

If appeasement, apology, apathy and unwillingness to use force when necessary to correct injustice are leading America in the "right" direction, then heaven help us.

John W. Thompson Sr.

Covington