Harvey Gardner

To the editor,

During my three years (1976-1979) of living and working inMuslim Iran, it became evident my middle-class students at the air base had been taught a warped (by our standards) view of the U.S.For example, they recited in great detail our mistreatment ofthe American Indians,how our government killed them, and uprooted them from their homes and forced them them to live in a desert where many of them died.

Back in 1976,the Islamic establishment was determined to overthrow the Shah who had embraced and enforced much of U.S. culture on the country. His lifestyle was too ostentatious for a Muslim society.He had an army fully capable of crushing Ayatollah Khomeini's unorganized rebels, but he had no answer for a devoted Muslim society who the mullahs were portraying as evil. In the face of mobs of his subjects, men, women, and children marching into withering machine gun fire, sacrificing themselves for jihad and a plush life in heaven, he had no alternative butto abdicate and leave the country.

Today we have the forces of evil and the forces of fear unwittingly joined together and re-enforcing each other. The forces of evil in the Muslim world, forces such as Al Qaeda, Taliban, the ruling Iranian clerics, Saddam Hussein's followers, the radical Sunnis and Shiites and the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia, forces who are more apt to be at each other's throats, have temporaily joined together to oust the United States and its allies from Iraq. Thier tools are murder and terror and they are taking their last desparate stand before they're driven back into hiding.

But the forces of fear are our biggest problem. The latest terrorist victory is, from their viewpoint, the overthrow of the Spanish government resulting from the multiple bombings of the trains in Madrid. The voters there promptly elected a new government based on a platform to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq, although, as of this writing, they haven't been withdrawn. Other countries with troops in Iraq are also being targeted; Japan being the latest.

Terrorists are expert at honing their fear tactics; they remember well how an American was dragged through the streets in Somalia and that this caused the American military to vacate the country. A similar scenario was repeated in Fallujah recently with the killing and mutilation of four civilian security men; all this being part of the effort to force American and alliance troops out of Iraq.

Unfortunately the nature of U.S. politics requires opposition — opposition just for the sake of opposition and this only inspires and incites terrorists to intensify their murderous efforts. Mary Baker Eddy in her world textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, touches on this issue, "Who is telling mankind of the foe in ambush? Is the informer one who sees the foe? If so, listen and be wise. Escape from evil, and designate those as unfaithful stewards who seen the danger and yet have given no warning."

Our President and his admininstration,our soldiers in the field see and understand the danger. This war should not be a political issue; our politicians should not be advocating withdrawal from the Middle East. They're only pandering to the latent fears of voters. We are in Iraq and Afganistan to present the Islamic world with an opportunity to throw off centuries of fear created by radical elements who twist the sayings in Mohammed's Koran in an attempt to keep Muslim society in a straight jacket of purity. Only God can do that — it's humanly impossible.

Good praying can shield us from and reduce the threats of today's world. The Textbook defines the threat this way — "The looms of crime, hidden in the dark recesses of mortal thought, are every hour weaving webs more complicated and subtle. So secret are the present methods of animal magnetism that they ensnare the age into indolence, and produce the very apathy on the subject which the criminal desires." Reading on in the Textbook, it becomes a prayer guide to help us solve the problems besetting today's world.

And this is Mrs. Eddy's charge to students of Christian Science in the textbook — "During this final conflict, wicked minds will endeavor to find means by which to accomplish more evil; but those discern Christian Science will hold crime in check. They will aidin the rejection or error. They will maintain law and order, and cheerfully await the certainty of ultimate perfection."

To all of you prayers,keep up the good work!

Harvey Gardner

Laconia