Re: Letter to the Editor

In a message dated 5/11/2004 12:49:30 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
[email protected] writes:

> No offense, and I won't belabor the points, but your POV is unfortunately
> stereotypical (also biased and objectively naive) of many I've known who
> haven't served, and especially those whose families haven't served in
> several generations. I also know that no amount of debate will alter their
> opinion... only direct experience would. Freedom isn't free, and while there
> are political atrocities, it's a tad too easy to sit here in the comfy US
> and judge those who maintain that freedom... 

How easy it for people to echo the smug, banal platitudes they hear on Fox 
TV, rather than do any real thinking!

How are our soldiers in Iraq "maintaining our freedom" for crying out loud? 
By invading, without provocation, a sovereign nation with a third-world economy 
and no weapons of mass destruction that just happens to have the oil we want? 
By reducing that country to murderous chaos? By surrounding and bombing the 
bejeezus out of whole cities, just because a few of them murdered and abused 
the bodies of four of our mercenary thugs? By torturing and humiliating 
prisoners, all of whom are legally innocent because none have been given any due pro
cess, in direct and egregious violation of the Geneva Conventions?
By making us the most hated and reviled nation on Earth, and validating all 
of Osama Bin Laden's stereotypes of our country as an unsanctified moral 
cesspool--thus ensuring endless terrorist attacks and making the entire planet 
unsafe for American tourists? Give me a break!

 My father, who served in the Navy during WWII, was truly "maintaining our 
freedom" against Nazis and Japanese fascists who threatened to destroy that 
freedom. Today the greatest threat to American freedom is not some mythical 
"enemy"--but George W. Bush--the pernicious regime whose heinous policies are 
destroying America day by day. I don't blame our soldiers (except, of course, for 
the depraved slobs complicit in the torture of prisoners and the outright, 
casual murderers and abusers of Iraqi civilians on the streets every day). Rather, 
I blame the son-of-a-bitch who sent them there, where they were unwelcome and 
are now hated, and where they have no right to be, by any law of God or man.