To the Editor:

Re “Veterans and White Supremacy,” by Kathleen Belew (Op-Ed, April 16):

As national commander of the American Legion, the nation’s largest veterans’ service organization, I condemn the deplorable actions of Frazier Glenn Miller, charged with three killings in Kansas. Veterans have taken an oath to defend America, not attack innocent civilians. However, the legion takes strong exception to Ms. Belew’s attempts to link Mr. Miller’s military service to the murders that he allegedly committed.

The American Legion has long shared Ms. Belew’s concern about white supremacist and radical groups. In 1923, when the Ku Klux Klan still had influence in this country, the American Legion passed Resolution 407. It said, in part, that “we consider any individual, group of individuals or organizations which creates or fosters racial, religious or class strife among our people, or which takes into their own hands the enforcement of law, the determination of guilt, or infliction of punishment, to be un-American, a menace to our liberties, and destructive to our fundamental law.”

Mr. Miller is just one of more than 42 million veterans who have worn this nation’s uniform during wartime since the American Revolution. Using him and Timothy J. McVeigh as examples of radicalized returning veterans is as unfair as using Osama bin Laden and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed as typical Muslims.

DANIEL M. DELLINGER

Indianapolis, April 18, 2014