posted July 4, 2008
I truly love my country. I served as a U.S. Marine. I love my country and I really want to change it. I want my country to value life and human rights more than it values material and goods and money. I want my country to stop advocating war as a method to solve
dispute. I want my country to stop trying to impose our way of life on others in different cultures. There have been 4,289 U.S. and coalition lives lost in Iraq.
Iraqi civilian deaths are harder to estimate, since "we don't do body
counts" (Tommy Franks). It is somewhere over 100,000. These numbers
I fear a threatening world for my children and I fear a nuclear war. War has destroyed the lives of people that I love and will continue to do so until we, as citizens put an end to war. Young men and women are taught to hate and kill people of other cultures who they have more in common with that the leader who send them to war.
But we have hope. We must be active in peacemaking and live by the teachings of prophets, including Jesus who said, "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." It is time to beat our swords into plowshares. We must stop the cycle of hate by loving our neighbor and standing up to the war makers.
Loving my county means that I must demand that we stop waging war.
We can end war. We still have hope.
John Zachary
johnzachary@mac.com
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Mr. Zachary's hope that we have no more wars is shared by most people. However the event called "Independence Day" used in his subject line would not have occurred without a war. Only a third of the American's supported that war. One third supported the British Crown.
The final third were like many modern day Americans, sitting on the sidelines sniping at the people supporting the revolution, but sticking their finger in the air every moment to see how the tides of war were going, waiting to announce their support of whoever the victors may be. You can pick facts apart, parse them, and spin them however you wish to vilify America, and there seems to be some people just naturally disposed to that, but using all of the facts at hand a rational and reasonable case can be made for every war in which we have been engaged.
And I offer up a couple of words to my son who is away from home this Independence Day - Semper Fi.
C.L. Miller
Hamilton County
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When I think of war, being a student of history but no scholar of history, I am reminded of the great Union General William T. Sherman. Concerning war he remarked, "There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell. You can bear this warning voice to generations yet to come. I look upon war with horror." Another General Robert E. Lee remarked, "It is well that war is so terrible-we should grow too fond of it." I think these two quotes speak volumes about the human psyche and our world.
I would like to thank Mr. Zachary for his service in the Marines, and I would also like to thank Mr. Miller for raising a son that would have the audacity to join the Marine Corps. We are all a band of brothers. Ronald Reagan once remarked that, "Some people live their entire lifetime wondering if they have made a difference. Marines don't have that problem." Semper Fi.
Stephen Durham freethinker1963@yahoo.com
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