Dear editor:
The big know-it-all generals and the pushy right-wing military-industrial-complex neocons are salivating to get us involved in another military action where we can't win. Don't talk about Vietnam and the Old Testament to try to make sending troops over there an action we should support or that "God" would want us to support. Who won in Vietnam? We didn't. And only afterwords did Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara concede that the "domino theory" (that the whole region would turn communist if we left ) was wrong.
Yeah, so we lost 58,000-plus troops; meanwhile we killed over 3.4 million (including men women and children) according to our figures, and still lost the war. (In other words, they killed less than 2 percent of how many we killed.) I have read that in the area we dropped over 7 million tons of bombs during the Vietnam years. Our bombs tried to destroy their land and their people. And what did all that carnage get us? Nothing! We lost! Why? Largely because it was their land. Remember our American Revolution? We won it largely because it was our land.
So think twice about getting involved in another war where it is their land. The Rev. Martin Luther King, along with a majority of common sense Americans, had the foresight to condemn the Vietnam War. What do you think he would be saying today? War? No way. You don't win the hearts and souls of a people by resorting to the old "eye for an eye" mentality of Mosaic Law. Their land and their oil should be theirs to do with as they like. Dropping bombs on them and their oil fields only further solidifies the thinking that they can't trust us. What are our motives? Is it that maybe we are really after controlling the oil fields and the revenue it produces? They and some of us have to believe so.
Most Americans understand that the wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan were counterproductive. They were wars of choice. And overall, they have just created more people who hate and distrust America and Western powers. The idiotic "War on Terror" has been about as successful as our "War on Drugs." At least after trying "Prohibition" we learned from a failed program and moved foreword. Can't we be so smart once again and see that our military involvement just gets us more enemies who want to do us harm? And with bigger and growing numbers, they will find a way. If you want peace, be an example of peace.
Bill Wiedmann
Hot Springs
Editorial on 09/27/2014