Michael Gerson's column ("Full speed ahead with full funding," Dec. 4) lambastes the Trump administration for its proposed cuts to HIV/AIDS programs worldwide. He asks fellow evangelicals, "what definition of being 'pro-life' does not include saving millions of lives from preventable disease and death?" Good question.

He goes back for a little history, January 2003 to be exact, when President George W. Bush proposed the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, noting that he advocated for the plan within the Bush administration.

The date has particular significance for something else Gerson advocated for as a member of the White House Iraq Group. That would be the Iraq invasion (talking about preventable deaths), illegal under the United Nations Charter, the Nuremberg Charter, U.S. Code law and in the opinion of then-U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Gerson not only advocated for war, but at the time was chief speechwriter for the president placing him in a prominent propaganda role (coining such as, smoking gun/mushroom cloud metaphor, axis of evil).

In the face of defeat, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels committed suicide but if Germany had been victorious there would have been a continuing role for someone so gifted with words.

James Rothenberg

North Chatham