10/11/2012 - West Side Leader
     

To the editor:

Mr. [Bill] Fairweather gets no apology from this “wishful romantic,” but we are finding some common ground (“Writer responds to rebuttal,” West Side Leader, Oct. 4, 2012). He is, it turns out, fair-minded enough to agree that a self-serving Congress is largely responsible for the slowness of our economic progress.

This time we learn that Fairweather is also an expert on the Middle East. Learning nothing from the recent embarrassing and inept attack on the president in a developing situation there, Mr. Fairweather is quick to chime in. He does not realize, as the president does, that newly minted governments there have to find their way to institute democratic institutions and before the tides of despotism sweep back over the Arab Spring. Patience and care are paramount.

The way to defend our ideals is by good example, and the Obama administration is setting one. Did we have enough defense at the embassy? In hindsight — no. What conversation did the president have with the Lybian and Egyptian prime ministers? Mr. Fairweather doesn’t know. His is just another ignorant attack at a bad time.

I am confident of this: The American public will not stand for our playing superpower and marching off to war because a bunch of militia idiots that the Lybians are already rejecting or for any other setbacks that are going to attend the growth of democracy in the Middle East.

John Welch, Fairlawn

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