War is not the answer

John Kerry had his chance in Boston to turn this country onto a more peaceful path, and the best he could do was parade his war buddies in front of the cameras and play up his battle readiness. We all realize he must win this pivotal election by playing to mainstream America’s fear of terrorism, but must he push the military angle, too? The one Bush used to create a pre-emptive war?

It’s a nasty world out there, and Dennis Kucinich is probably not the captain I want on the bridge in rough seas. I would prefer that Kerry also play up his pacifist history post-Vietnam and give the tough-guy image a rest. It’s the opposition to Bush and war that he should be talking about.

The Iraq war, as we now know, was a “pre-emptive” war staged against an admittedly evil man, but for no good security reason. Saddam Hussein couldn’t hurt us. Thousands of Iraqi civilians died, and almost a thousand of our own people have been killed for no good reason. I hold the president and his hawkish cult responsible, but soldiers have to take some blame. If they refused to volunteer to kill, there wouldn’t be those unnecessary deaths. Naive? Perhaps, but draft resistance helped stop the Vietnam War.

Should peaceful people hate the soldiers? No. They were doing what the political leaders wrongly asked of them. Perhaps Kerry will pull them out of Iraq in January and not put them in harm’s way again unless absolutely necessary.

Let’s now consider the end result of a soldier’s return from that ongoing dreadful war (“Aftershocks from Iraq”). The emotional scars run deep, yet they eventually will be revealed.