WHO ARE OUR FRIENDS?

I don’t know where writer Tricia Connelly got her “facts” about the Middle East, but they sound like Arab propaganda to me (see “letters,” Nov. 9-15). In most Arab countries a woman would be either arrested or hassled and ticketed for a “crime” of dressing immodestly. That means not being covered head to toe.

It’s a crime to be out on the street without the company of an adult male. Women are seen as property to be controlled in Arab countries. Women generally are not allowed education, independence, self expression, to hold a job, in your “friendly” Arab countries.

Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were all from “friendly” Saudi Arabia. School children are brainwashed that Christians and Jews are enemies to be hated. Preconditioned to be terrorists in “friendly” Arab countries.

Arab nations did not let us use their bases as you claim, Ms. Connelly. Saudi Arabia specifically refused us the right to use bases we built there with their permission to protect them. These Arab royal families get billions in oil, yet their people get nothing. As a diversion they allow their radicals “freedom” to preach hatred against us.

Israel may not be our buddy buddy pal, but most Arabs think it’s our own fault that terrorists committed mass murder against us. That is the general in the street opinion in “friendly” Arab countries. That if we were not “arrogant,” it wouldn’t have happened. That is hate speech to me.

The attack on America was a hate crime, committed by fanatics who want to kill us all if they can. If a woman gets flattened and beaten by a boyfriend we don’t ask what the woman did to deserve the beating. We just go after the bastard who did it. It’s a valid analogy. We are at war!

John A. Dow

Scarborough, ME

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