Letters to the Editor
Garry Owen
Published Letters: 2821 Editor's Choice: 151
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Alveda King is an astute opportunist
[Read the article: We shall overcome ... liberals]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Alveda King-Tookes buried her famous uncle and has been cashing in ever since. She noisily exploited her relationship with M.L. King even though her side of the family was estranged from him until he died.
Now here she is, a woman who has made a career and good living from her unearned but fortunate family tie, joining hands with white supremacist demagogues in a mocking chorus of "We Shall Overcome."
I'm surprised that so many others are surprised. Alveda King-Tookes has never wavered from her principles. First principle? "Show me the money!"
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Even a broken watch is correct twice a day
[Read the article: The boneheaded carnality of man]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Rather than relying upon Biblical hokus pokus to see the future, you need only to walk into a Wal-Mart and do a little shopping. Almost everything you pick up says "Made in China."
Just because the fundamentalist nut-jobs have hit upon using a menacing, united Asia as a fear-mongering tool, doesn't mean the underlying premise is false.
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Mel Brooks could have pulled this off, but Albert? Nah.
[Read the article: "Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Albert Brooks is OK in vapid, slow-developing romantic comedies I guess. But Brooks has three comedic expressions he applies to every situation; pitiful, clueless and dumb. I wonder what Mel Brooks could have done with the same screenplay. Or better yet, Jerry Seinfeld.
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A little more male bonding would be good
[Read the article: Cheney shoots a man in Texas, but you don't need to know]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Next time Big Dick goes hunting, he ought to take little Chimpy with him.
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A combat veteran and former dog handler must weigh in
[Read the article: What war can do]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I was drafted in '69. As a scout, I began walking point for infantry patrols along the Cambodia border in the summer of '70 through '71. I didn't want to be there. I guess by the rationale of most of the letter writers here, I'm a murderer too.
I don't consider myself as wise as the rest of you who seem to know so much about war and what soldiers think and do, even though you've never been there. I learned a long time ago to just endure in silence the idealistic rhetoric of some of my fellow Democrats.
It's not easy being on your side, against Bush's war of convenience in Iraq, when I am by your definition, condemned as a murderer, a child killer just because I was a soldier in the army. I admit it, that I have committed homicide, directly and indirectly, by allowing myself to be drafted. According to some of you, I should have resisted, gone to Canada and renounced my citizenship. My only excuse, if I need one, is that I was young, dumb and numb, like a lot of the kids today who get lured into the combat arms branches of the military. Oh, but some of you are so much more committed to your ideals, so much more pure than anybody in the military. I bow to your superior intellect, your higher sense of morality. It must be swell to be so holy.
But I'll stand with my brothers in arms, as ignorant as they are, or ever were. I know them. I was among them. I don't know much, according to some of you, but I know what they are going through and many of you don't. Even though they volunteered, the reality of what they signed on for didn't sink in. They find out way too late what they are really in for. By the time they get into combat, the truth is clear: If you want to come home alive, you have to save your own ass. There are no ideological discussions about war and peace. That time has long passed for a front line grunt. You know only what is going on in your squad and the guys to your left and right.
You can all pontificate about what you personally would have done in my situation, or the situations of our soldiers in Iraq. It's easy. But you don't know, and you'll never know.
It's hard for a war veteran to make a choice to stand side by side with some of you who condemn us for what we did, for what we do. But here we are, standing with you anyway. John Kerry killed a boy in Vietnam. By the official account, the kid fired an RPG at his boat. His weapon was spent, he was now defenseless. Kerry ran after him and shot him in the back as the kid ran, unarmed. Kerry is a murderer. How do you reconcile that?
But just so you know, My Lai was a massacre commited by our soldiers, it's true. But the killing at My Lai was also stopped by a soldier on our side who was willing to fire on our own troops if they didn't stop shooting civilians.
None of you know what really went on when those 11 civilians in Iraq were found murdered. What disgusts me is that you are so quick to condemn our soldiers and then conflate that into saying that we are all a bunch of ruthless murderers by definition.
I don't know what went on up there either. But I know from my personal experience that it's really unlikely that a rifle squad would massacre a whole family and not one single soldier among them would be remorseful enough to stop it, or at least report it, as was done at My Lai. The soldiers in Iraq are a diverse bunch. Some of them, probably a lot of them, don't want to be there now that they know what's going on.
But a lot of them are Democrats. If you want them to stand beside you to defeat Bush and get this country back on track, you might want to stop calling them murderers and find a way to help them adjust to their return home. It's going to be a tough journey back.