To the editor:
I am fairly certain that I am the “so-called vet” Jason Libby is referring to in his long-winded, shortsighted diatribe published in the Feb. 3 FREE PRESS. I’m frankly appalled that you would question my service, Jason Libby. I talk to plenty of different veterans, some of whom do not share my opinions, but we generally have a certain level of respect for each other, as fellow veterans. In all honesty, my initial reaction to reading your letter was a deep rage, a feeling I generally try to avoid, although I am sure many veterans would feel the same way if they were the object of such an attack.
But I’ll save you the trouble of “checking” on my background. I served in Desert Storm with the First Platoon of Alpha Company, 5th of the 18th Infantry Battalion, Third Brigade of the Third Armored Division, on detachment to the VII Corps. That’s a line unit. I was a United States Army Infantryman, a product of Sand Hill at Fort Benning, GA. I was not a “mess hand” or a “store keeper,” although I would not be pompous enough to denigrate anybody who served his or her country in such a capacity. I was a grunt–a grunt in a war that killed about a hundred thousand people. I know very well the terror and horror that many of my brother-infantrymen faced in other wars (and in the Gulf, as well) and I am profoundly aware of how lucky I was to get out of the war as lightly as I did. But I was in combat, Jason Libby. I’ve seen things and smelled things and felt things that nobody should have to experience. Let me be very clear about this, Jason Libby: I voluntarily put my life in danger on behalf of this country at a very young age. Something, I cannot help but note, that the current Commander-in-Chief and most of his advisors never did.
I do not claim to be an “expert” on anything. But this is a government for and by the people (at any rate, I am going to insist on behaving as if it is), and I am an informed citizen, so I have every right to speak my opinions about foreign policy. You seem to want the entire country to follow along with the administration’s cartoonish, Manichean view of reality. You want us to all “pull together and put an end to every piece of scum out there.” Great idea, Jason Libby, but who gets to define “scum”? I think corporations who lie to their employees and rob them of their retirements are scum. I think pro-corporate senators and congressmen of all political parties are scum. Of course, there are millions of people in Latin America who have suffered for years under U.S.-trained death and torture squads, and they might define “scum” a little bit differently than you do, Jason Libby. I guess simply going out and “putting an end to all the scum” is a bit more complicated than it sounds when we are just talking self-righteously out of our portholes.
Of course, Saddam Hussein is scum. He was scum all through the 80’s, when we were tirelessly supporting him. He’s a bad guy and the world would be better without him. But the world will not be better if we launch a war that will kill up to five hundred thousand people. You say that the human shields will be killed by Iraq, who will blame it on the United States–I don’t doubt that Iraq would do something like that, but consider the fact that we’re going to be pounding somewhere around 800 tow missiles into Baghdad; that’s not even factoring in the bombing sorties. It’s going to be pretty hard to figure out just who killed who ANYWHERE in Baghdad. But I’m guessing you never saw what a bombed out city looks like, Jason Libby.
I have no idea if “most” veterans oppose this war–but I do know very well that I am hardly an abnormality. I also know that individual veterans have been at the forefront in organizing the opposition to this war. I don’t think any of us are naive about Saddam Hussein’s moral character. But there are other kinds of naivete. It’s naive to think that a situation like this will be improved by the use of extreme force. Killing thousands of innocent people will cause deep anger and resentment in millions more. To quote an ad that ran in the Wall Street Journal (paid for by Republicans), “This war will cause a billion bitter enemies to rise against us.” Many veterans also do not believe that the Department of Defense has done enough to protect our men and women in uniform from the dangers of chemical warfare–which they are even more likely to face this time. According to the army’s own General Office of Accounting (GOA) report from 2001, up to 62 percent of the masks and 90 percent of the detection units are defective (this last bit of information about the detection units probably comes as no surprise at all to many line soldiers from the last war). A GOA report from 2002 found that 250,000 defective chemical protection suits were “lost” in the army inventory, just waiting to be handed out to some unsuspecting GI. Many of us are also concerned that the Department of Defense again seems prepared to use massive amounts of ammunition made from Depleted Uranium. Most scientific studies not conducted by the Department of Defense have found DU to be extremely toxic–every population ever exposed to it, military or civilian has experienced marked increases in cancer, kidney problems, and birth defects, among other health problems. The CIA themselves reported that Hussein is only likely to use chemical weapons if he has nothing left to lose–so if we go in looking to take him out, we can realistically expect our troops to face them. The administration has indicated they will respond with a nuclear attack; our soldiers will be there for that, too.
I myself was exposed to DU for months. I am now 32 and recently married. I would like to have children, and have done a great deal of research about DU–everything I’ve read indicates that the risk is simply too big to take. So maybe, Jason Libby, you can understand just how angry it must make me to read a letter from somebody who never met me, who knows nothing about me, running off his mouth about my military service. I live with the long term ramifications and legacy of my military service every day of my life. And it is a legacy that I am unwilling to see passed on to another generation of veterans, just for the benefit of expanding the oil mafia’s Imperial reach into yet another exploited country.
Briggs Seekins
USM, Class of 1995
To The Editor:
I would like to thank Petty Officer Third Class Libby for his excellent letter in last week’s paper about his view (and mostly every veteran, active duty or reserve members’ view) on the war. I am glad someone finally said it. He will most likely get a lot of grief about his view but it is one that is true and well stated. Unless you have served for your country you have no right to judge what you don’t understand. Thank you again HT3 Libby.
SN Courtney Bright
U.S. Coast Guard
Freshman, undeclared
To the editor:
Having recently returned from participating in solidarity actions in Palestine (http://www.palsolidarity.org) which included human shield work–riding in ambulances that have a tendency to be shot at by Israeli soldiers, and defending the Palestinians during peaceful protest from Israeli bullets from American manufactured weapons–I was amused, if not frightened, by Jason Libby’s shoddy and absurd patriotic rant.
Even for an English major he is surpassingly inarticulate. Human shield work rarely if at all involves “camping out at military locations” to protect them from attack, unless Libby imagines the entire country of Iraq as a “military location.” That is a view consistent with the All Arabs Are Terrorist outlook, and one which hardly needs debunking, but one gets the idea of how Jason thinks. I am concerned about Saddam and his trouble making, but I don’t share Jason’s concern that if we leave Saddam alone, “He will most likely attack our neighbors.” Is Saddam planning on attacking Mexico or Canada? Perhaps one of the small Caribbean islands, an easier target? Psst! Jason, Israel is considered an ally, not a neighbor.
Poor Jason, he had hopes that the United States would “put an end to every piece of scum out there” after Sept. 11, but unfortunately, the “dam broke” when the United States set its sights on Iraq. The anti-war sentiment that pervades USM is too much for him, and I might ask–really?
Democracy is about following the orders of the Government and the Military, not arguing and hoping against the use of force. War, it’s a necessity. According to Jason one of the reasons Sept. 11 happened was because of all the anti-war sentiment during the Clinton era. Murdering a known terrorist had to take a backseat. Jason believes that “Sept. 11 didn’t get the point across.” Whiners and complainers ought to head to Canada.
Jason, many people don’t believe the U.S. government and very much want a peaceful solution to the U.S. conflict with Iraq or at least one worked out through a UN security council resolution. We don’t want to go to war because innocent lives will be lost. As Robert Frisk, Middle East correspondent for The Independent (http://www.independent.co.uk) has pointed out: “War isn’t about winning or losing, it’s about death.”
William Burke
Junior, English major
To the editor:
Remember the news coverage of women being shot by the Taliban in Afghanistan? Well, its happening every day in Iraq–hundreds of Kurdish villagers have been eliminated by the Iraqi army and the killing continues. Women in Iraq have no political rights and few, if any, legal rights. Yet I have not heard so much as a whisper from the liberal media on these important issues. Evidently, equal rights only apply to American citizens. Look at the situation in Afghanistan now: women are allowed to vote, go to work and girls are going to school. Perhaps the Bush Administration is going to war over oil, or because of the concerns over Middle East instability. So be it. As a consequence, Iraqi women will finally be freed from oppression and the ethnic cleansing of the Kurds would finally cease.
Mrs. Cindy Merrill
History major
To the Editor:
All this anti-war/anti-U.S. talk at USM has me laughing and crying at the same time. People seem to be missing the picture. If this wasn’t the United States then they would not be allowed to voice their opinions or hold their anti-war and peace rallies. It’s absurd to watch someone make a speech about the horrific U.S. government. But because this is the United States people can say almost anything they want. We have these freedoms. Our government and military are obligated to protect them. Yet protests are being carried out all over the country against our government and military. People are protesting the organizations that give them their freedom to protest. They are exercising their rights as Americans.
Do these people honestly believe that freedom is at all existent everywhere else in the world? In such countries as Iraq the thought of holding or demonstrating an opinion contradictory to Saddam is unfeasible and impossible. To do so means instant death for self and family. Saddam Hussein has already killed 1.5 million Kurds. He has murdered 1.5 million of his own people. I am shocked that universities such as USM are not in an uproar and protesting the genocide being committed by Saddam. Instead they are protesting the military involvement of the United States. Hitler killed over six million people before we the United States got involved. We waited too long then. We should have learned our lesson. We have a responsibility to help out the Iraqi people. Otherwise everything we supposedly stand for is simply political rhetoric. All these supposed humanitarians are more than willing to sit back and let someone like Saddam commit these atrocities.
The fact is our government is not perfect. It is corrupt and infested with problems. But I challenge anyone who argues that it is not the best in the world. I challenge those who protest the United States involvement with Iraq to move to Iraq. Try and protest over there. Try and exercise one-just one-right you have as an American over in Iraq.
As for the human shields: Those people are crazy. Iraq is already a war zone. Those people are just putting themselves in an incredibly dangerous and volatile situation. Hopefully Saddam will see it in his best political interest to keep those people alive. Otherwise they are facing certain doom. Our military will most likely be forced to risk soldiers’ lives in attempt to rescue these people. Their presence in Iraq will only cause more casualties.
People are arguing that Saddam doesn’t pose a real threat to the United States. They are arguing that Saddam has no connection with Al Qaeda. I have heard USM professors state that Saddam and Al Qaeda are actually enemies. Saddam has large quantities of biological and chemical weapons. Some of these substances can kill thousands with only little amounts. He also has a small number of nuclear weapons (that the world knows of) and the potential to create more. He has been testing these weapons on prisoners and citizens of his country as well as the people of Kuwait for the last 20 years. A group of Al Qaeda is now training in Baghdad. They are being trained on how to handle and use the deadly ricin toxin. Ricin is considered a weapon of mass destruction because of its effective and deadly use as an agent of biological warfare. Ricin can be disseminated as an aerosol, by injection, or as a food and water contaminant. Though easily available it is difficult to extract and contain. It is now in the hands of terrorists due to Saddam Hussein.
Some say that we should not act without the United Nation’s consent. That’s ridiculous. We tried the weapons inspections. They do not work. It’s a game of hide and seek. We have all the allies we need with Israel and England. It is time to act.
Jared Valiquet
Sophomore, undeclared