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Readers’ Views on War and Peace

I am not afraid

To the editor:

I have never been afraid to speak out on issues that mean a great deal to me. But times have changed.

I am against the U.S. invasion of Iraq. I am not a pacifist; I believe there is a time for war. This was not the time. But frankly, I have been afraid to say this aloud. Why am I afraid? I have tried to reason this out so that I would not be afraid.

I am afraid that others will question my patriotism.

I am afraid that I will be branded as sympathetic to the Saddam Hussein regime. I am afraid that I will be accused of not supporting the U.S. troops in the line of fire.

I am afraid that I will lose my civil liberties.

I am afraid that my family, especially my two children, will be ostracized for my viewpoints.

Are these real or imagined fears?

One need only to watch cable and network news or listen to radio talk shows to find evidence that my fears are indeed real. Those who have questioned the legitimacy of the war have been branded unpatriotic by Bush Administration officials. Garbage-mouthed hosts on television and radio tell anti-war protestors to live in Iraq if they do not like it here. Many well-meaning people equate those unsympathetic to the U.S. invasion of Iraq as being wimps who are supporting the Iraqi regime and not our troops. Arab-Americans have been incarcerated without formal charges or public hearings while others have been deported.

There is reason to be afraid.

I am a patriot and a loyal citizen. I am glad that Saddam Hussein is out of the picture. I support the U.S. troops.

But am I in danger of losing my civil liberties?  If American citizens and legal immigrants of Middle Eastern descent can be held without charges for indefinite periods of time, am I next?  Are we reliving what happened to Japanese-Americans who, during World War II, were herded off to camps simply because of their ethnic heritage? Is the U.S. fighting for freedom and democracy for the Iraqi people while taking away these same principles for her own citizenry?

For his American history class, one of my sons wrote a letter to President Bush, outlining why he felt the U.S. war in Iraq was illogical and wrong. He received a perfect grade for the assignment. I was proud of his letter and my first instinct was for him to mail it to President Bush or to send it to the newspaper to publish. Then I stopped and thought, “If others knew his point of view, would he suffer repercussions?” I was afraid, but I no longer wish to be afraid. Now I will encourage him to send his letter. Now I will encourage him to be a real American.

Fern Lee Hagedorn
Beach Lake, PA

Embedded corporations

You don’t have to be paranoid to declare that big corporations and our central government are in collusion. Their goal is not merely the economic well being or parity with the rest of the world which would be fairness. Rather, it is economic dominance to fuel a voracious standard of living out of sync with limited natural resources and often out of step with the imperatives of true social progress. Simply stated, this is greed. 

Though they stuck out their necks to support the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the British will be closed out of the lucrative reconstruction projects. (Sorry Brits, only American corporations need apply. Apply? Oh, heck, a back slap will do. We know who you are Bechtel.)

This is the same Bechtel that George Schultz headed before and after his stint as Secretary of State for the Reagan Administration in the 1980s. That’s when Donald Rumsfeld, current Defense Secretary, was sent in 1983 as a peace emissary to meet with Saddam Hussein whose Iraqi army and the Iranians were engaged in a mutual slaughter with arms supplied by the West, while Hussein gassed his own people with technology supplied by the West. The peace Rumsfeld discussed with Saddam was really a piece of real estate—a Bechtel oil pipeline through Iraq to Aqaba, Jordan. This is a case of a government emissary doing a corporation’s bidding.

Recently revealed documents show no U.S. condemnation of Iraq’s use of weapons of mass destruction at that time. As long as we had something to gain we were willing to let a demon be our friend—after all he was kicking Iran’s butt.

Then too, there is the selfish practice of U.S. corporations transferring assets to offshore headquarters thereby depriving the treasury of an estimated $70 billion annually. Meanwhile, you and I pay for a $70 billion war while funding for veteran’s benefits, education, and environmental protection languish. Dick Cheney, former Halliburton CEO, raised the number of his subsidiaries sheltered in offshore tax havens from nine in 1995 to 44 in 1999, to make him one of the most notorious of these tax dodgers.

While the U.S. population has been blinded by the manufactured specter of a grizzly Arab somehow threatening us with a decaying third-rate army and by the horror of Saddam visiting Peoria with weapons of mass destruction which we can’t find and which his army was supposed to use on our troops out of desperation, this corporate-government connivance uses the gauzy screen of patriotic sentimentality to roll on.

Certainly some good has been flowing from the invasion, but will the U.S. really allow a Shiite pro-Iranian government if that is the will of the majority of Iraqis?

Don’t count on it.

Recent history is strewn with democratically elected governments subjugated by the U.S., sometimes with the help of American corporations (as with ITT in Chile) when those regimes presented an inconvenience to our global economic and military hegemony.

We need to consider that our country may not always occupy the moral high ground and that what the central government in collusion with big business does in our name, may not be in the best interest of ordinary citizens like you and me, not to mention peace and stability in the world.

Peter Comstock
Glen Spey, NY

Seat of the pants planning

To the editor:

The Pentagon and the White House seemed to have planned by the seat of their pants in Iraq. The war plans changed from shock and awe bombing to a smart bomb assassination attempt. The results were questionable, so the troops advanced through the desert toward Baghdad, by-passing other cities. The next plan was to bomb and lay siege to Baghdad, but that changed to a tank and armored vehicle drive into the capital.

All this time, no plans were made or money set aside to establish law and order anywhere in that nation. Nor were any plans made for protecting the greatest archeological treasures of Mesopotamia, the birthplace of civilization in the Near East. Here is where writing, astronomy, and mathematical systems started, where the arts flourished. It is where the first law codes were carved in stone under the rulers Ur-Nammu and then Hammurabi, centuries before Moses brought the Ten Commandments down from Mt. Sinai. It is the birthplace of Abraham, the patriarch of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

When the army and marines took over Baghdad, they established military control but allowed civil anarchy to take over. Widespread looting took place at government sites including the Iraq National Museum where thousands of ancient objects were taken or badly damaged. Gone or destroyed are three, four and five thousand-year-old pieces such as the earliest examples of cuneiform writing preserved on clay tablets from Uruk, sculpture and goldwork from the royal cemeteries of Ur and cylinder seals from Agade and Babylon. The museum could easily have been protected by a hundred marines, but without orders the troops merely manned checkpoints or stayed in their tanks elsewhere.

Was the Pentagon still engaging in day-by-day planning? Their after-the-crime call for former Iraqi policemen to return to work as volunteers to restore order is laughable. How ironic it is that the troops were given orders, early on to secure the oil wells in the south and the north of the country. Oil, but not the very heritage of civilization!

Dr. Mort Malkin
Milanville, PA

To the editor:

In this very dark, anxious, and confusing time I have found that a flame of hope has been lighted for all of us. On April 8th Congressman Dennis Kucinich submitted a bill in the House of Representatives to establish a Department of Peace at the cabinet level. When established this department will hold peace as an organizing principle, coordinating service to every level of our American society. Besides our domestic needs this department will reach out to all nations to offer non-violent conflict resolution wherever there is a problem.

It is most remarkable that such a strong voice calling for negotiating and peace at all levels of society and in the world could be an established part of our Federal government. It gives me hope.

Now, how do we get this bill HR 1673 passed? First, you go to www.dopcampaign.org to read the bill in its summary form or in its entirety. Then, we lobby our elected officials in Washington DC by telephone. This is like blowing on that flame of hope to get it to burn ever more brightly until it is irresistible and becomes the law of our land.

I volunteered to be the lobbying coordinator in our area, so if you want to start lobbying for this inspiring bill and very much needed voice in our government, please call me at 845/292-2279 for instructions. It requires only 10 to 15 minutes per week to do this lobbying.

Tim Shera
Liberty, NY