LETTER TO EDITOR: Don't bargain with barbarism

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I enjoyed your editorial "Covering up jihad" (Opinion, Tuesday). Tragically, the recent slaughter of Americans at Fort Hood, Texas, is not the first time an Islamic extremist has taken or tried to take the lives of innocent Americans on U.S. soil.

Among some of the recent incidents, the slaughter of five people in Utah in 2007 by Bosnian Muslim immigrant Sulejman Talovic should be remembered and noted. Also, four Kosovo Albanians were convicted in 2008 of plotting to slaughter American soldiers at Fort Dix, N.J., demonstrating that this most recent Islamic terrorist-inspired mass murder has been in the works for some time.

From all of these incidents, it appears that Islamic extremism and the American way of life are incompatible. Though few Americans know it, many of these tragic events (including the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001) are blowback from the policies initiated by President Clinton and continued by his successors.

You can't make a deal with the devil. If we want to end these senseless killings, we have to address the root of the problem by recognizing that we cannot support terrorists in one part of the world and then try to defeat them elsewhere. Like the old story of the scorpion and the frog crossing the river, they will bite the hand that saves them.

MICHAEL PRAVICA

Henderson, Nev.