Post #27735 by Thor on Mon, Mar 24, 2003 2:17 AM

Tiki_Bong,

I will readily admit that, having never been employed by the United States armed forces, I have no idea what our soldiers feel when they see protesters. I hope that they understand that the majority of the protests are targeted at the policies of the government, not the support of troops.

Peace protesters do not cheer the demise of soldiers. They criticize the reasons for putting soldiers in harm's way. Unfortunately, critics of protesters often collude these two ideas. I hope that you, and our soldiers abroad, can see the difference.

I will also readily admit that protesters, myself included, are influenced by the actions of past protesters, not just limited to the Vietnam war. This is not saying much. Everyone is influenced by the past, including soldiers, war supporters, and the president. Where I disagree with you is your assumption that people around the world are voicing dissent in order to be "in vogue." Have you asked them why they are protesting? Does the possibility exist that they are as adamant in their opinions as the people who decide to support and join the military?

To assume that those who oppose the invasion of Iraq are any less serious than those who support it is insulting to all who desire a truly democratic process.

Enjoy your freedom - someone else died to give it to you...

Yes, many people have fought to further the pursuit of freedom. The horrible fear of many protestors is that any deaths caused by Operation Iraqi Imperialism, be they of soldiers or civilians, are not in the name of freedom but in the name of plutocratic capitalist oppression.

The list of people who fought for my freedom, by the way, does include many more than just soldiers who were sent into battle. It includes victims of prejudice like Balbir Singh Sodhi, Medgar Evers, and Matthew Shepard. It includes activists for workers' rights like Eugene Debs, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Cesar Chavez. It includes Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Martin Luther King, Jr., Eleanor Roosevelt and Sojourner Truth. It includes victims of a corrupt U.S. justice system like Nicola Sacco, Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Kevin Nigel Stanford and Roger Corman.

It also includes victims of oppression at the hands of the United States Government, from the Hawai'ian Kingdom to WWII Japanese-American internees to the 600 prisoners who are being refused access to lawyers in Guantanamo Bay.

Recent actions of the United States government, including a withdrawal from the International Criminal Court, the threat to civil liberties posed by the passing of the Patriot Act, and the blatant disregard of the opinions of the United Nations (read: rest of the world) refute any claim that the state has for protecting the freedom of its citizens.

I said to myself, here are a people who have suffered for three centuries. We can make them as free as ourselves, give them a government and country of their own, put a miniature of the American constitution afloat in the Pacific, start a brand new republic to take its place among the free nations of the world. It seemed to me a great task to which we had addressed ourselves.

But I have thought some more, since then, and I have read carefully the treaty of Paris, and I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem.

We have also pledged the power of this country to maintain and protect the abominable system established in the Philippines by the Friars.

It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people free, and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.

             -Mark Twain  

[ Edited by: Thor on 2003-03-24 04:27 ]