Letter to the President

Mr. President,

I’m writing you as a lifelong American, born and raised here in Arkansas, someone who has supported you through thick and thin because I believed you’d put our country first. But today, I’m stunned—flat-out stunned—by the idea that Ahmed al-Sharaa is being welcomed into the White House like some kind of partner or friend.

Sir, this man wasn’t just “involved” with terrorists. He led the local al-Qaeda branch in Syria. Before that he was working with al-Qaeda in Iraq. He has blood on his hands—American blood. Men and women in uniform, kids from places like Little Rock, Fort Smith, and Pine Bluff who signed up to serve their country never came home because of people like him. And now we’re rolling out the red carpet? Smiling for cameras? Pretending this is diplomacy?

It makes no sense. It feels like madness. It feels like the kind of upside-down foreign policy that leaves regular Americans shaking their heads wondering who in Washington is even thinking about us anymore.

I get that the world is complicated. I get that sometimes we have to make hard deals with people we don’t like. But there’s a difference between negotiations behind closed doors and putting a terrorist in a suit and acting like he’s some kind of respectable statesman. That’s not strategy—that’s disrespect. To our soldiers. To their families. To every American who believes in basic moral lines we shouldn’t cross.

Mr. President, I’m saying this because I care about this country and I still want to believe in your leadership. But this decision is wrong. It’s dangerous. And it sends a message nobody I know in Arkansas can make sense of: that we’ve forgotten the cost of the wars we fought and the lives we lost.

Please reconsider this path. We don’t honor peace by forgetting who killed our people.

Respectfully but firmly,

A concerned American from Arkansas