Dear Editor,

A not uncommon argument of peace activists is that U.S. military action is “bad” because it “teaches Muslims to hate,”and will just result in an “endless cycle of violence.”
This is fundamentally wrong for many reasons. One’s material and spiritual values, and the personal appraisal of events and people in external reality in relationship to them, form the fundamental basis of emotions in general.

A person can not experience emotions without holding values, i.e. judging something in particular as “good” or “bad” for his life and happiness. One cannot “love” something or someone without making the assessment (correctly or incorrectly) that this particular thing or person is crucial to his or her life and happiness. Correspondingly, one cannot “hate” someone or something without holding strong values and judging this thing or person (again, correctly or incorrectly) as a threat to the destruction, or as an actual destroyer of, their values. Thus, the actual values one holds determine the nature of one’s behavior and actions. Just as important as the Content of one’s values is the method by which they have come to hold them and the extent to which one’s values are “rational” i.e. permitting and enhancing, as opposed to destroying and detracting from, one’s own life and the lives of others. Finally, rational behavior presupposes some ability to judge the objectivity of one’s internal emotional responses in relationship to external facts through a process of rational thought, and to base their actions not just blindly on unexamined emotions, but on facts.
What are the values of our enemies? Bind obedience to religious – and dictatorial – decree- under threat of death, imprisonment, and torture – not for the purpose of material well being and happiness in this world, but for the purpose of an afterlife.

By what means do they hold them? Here, the content of their values are related to the method by which they have come to hold them- bind obedience to supernatural and state authority, completely rejecting facts, reason, reality and the objective requirements of success and happiness in this world.

Since the very values and the methods they reject, are those that the U.S. embodies, they can do nothing BUT hate us, and therefore, seek to destroy us by any and every means possible to them. To the extent that the Koran preaches the “killing of infidels this becomes a noble ideal.”

Since we have no choice to influence their values and corresponding emotions- i.e their motivation to destroy us, our only choice and our self-preservation rests on acting in such a manner to make it impossible for them to ACT on their emotions, and we must act uncompromisingly to take away ANY and EVERY means they possess to implement their philosophy of destruction – or watch it slowly and surely succeed.

– Evan Madianos, Maryland