Kasey Moyes, you're right. Your letter is unsuitable for readers ("War necessary, can rarely be avoided" SN 6/9). To say in most cases that "going to war and putting soldiers in harm's way is not the last resort - it's the only resort" is absurd and dangerous. If we went by your philosophy, all would be fighting, and those kids and grandkids that you speak of definitely would not be safe.
The safety of your children, grandchildren, family, friends and neighbors were never at risk from Iraq. You cannot link our previous wars with the present, nor can you link the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to Iraq either.
How can we forget about the absence of WMD when Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense at the time, stated in an interview on May 28, 2003 in "Vanity Fair" that "for bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction."
The pursuit of democracy was not the main issue, as you incorrectly stated. You're right, we can thank the United Nations because we have found no weapons. Their inspections and sanctions might have worked. We have been in that country for more than two years; don't you think we would have found Saddam's "hidden" weapons by now? In January of this year, U.S. military forces, having located no weapons of mass destruction, formally abandoned the search.
A lot of letters directed to me in The State News have also argued that human rights violations in Iraq were a main reason for war. The question I have is why the U.S. government didn't do much to prevent or to punish those crimes when they happened, but then use them years later for a war initially explained with different reasons.
The use of chemical weapons against Kurds in 1983 was known by U.S. intelligence. Donald Rumsfeld, at the time presidential envoy of Ronald Reagan, however, spoke of "his close relationship" with Saddam at that time and visited him. After the Persian Gulf War, the U.S. government encouraged rebellions by the Shiites but did not intervene when Saddam crushed the rebels.
Don't place shame on me for questioning our government: That is my constitutional right. The lead up to the Iraq war had nothing to do with fighting terrorism or spreading democracy. Remember, I have been talking about the Iraq war, not Afghanistan, not the "War on Terror," not Sept. 11 and certainly not terrorists entering the U.S. and converting us all to Muslims, as Scott Owen suggested ("Bush's reasons for war proven valid" SN 6/2). Let us stick to the main issue when writing a response letter.
Herb Parlato
2000 graduate
