Letter to Editor/”i am ashamed of my country,”
Ashamed of our country
Lately, I have had difficulty understanding our failure to come to the aid of Poland, France and England with the German invasion beginning WW2. It took Pearl Harbor to get us into that war. What a contrast to our going into Vietnam, the Gulf War, Iraq and Afghanistan. We entered those wars, it seems, without a second thought, regardless of how other countries had been fighting unsuccessfully in some of the countries. I can remember a friend emailing me that we were going into Iraq to save the country, comparing Saddam to Hitler. I replied that I watched the news that night showing children in schools being instructed how to get under their desks to protect themselves. And I said that Iraq didn’t have an army of men with uniforms, so how you would know who your enemy was?
So now, we leave Afghanistan, I have seen pictures of our allies clinging to airplanes leaving with our citizens. It was announced last month our troops would be leaving by a certain date, and we would evacuate those who had helped us by the end of the next week! Did any of those people making that decision have a sense of how that wouldn’t work! Those who helped us should have been evacuated while our troops were there to be sure it happened?
We cannot always be proud of our past.
Our civil rights history has been and remain a major problem.
More than 900 Jewish people on the M.S. St Louis were denied entry in the US by immigration authorities in 1939; the ship was sent back to Europe and nearly one third of the passengers were murdered.
But back to Iraq and Afghanistan. Was the war a failure? Not for the top five defense contractors and their shareholders. If you purchased $10,000 in those companies, it would now be worth $97,295.00, Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics. (The Intercept, Jon Schwarz 17 Aug. 21). Compare this to a 2013 updated study which show that the “US medical and disability claims for veterans after a decade of war had risen to $134.7 billion from $33 billion two years earlier” and continue to rise. This doesn’t even address men and women who didn’t return.
I am ashamed of our country. My flag will be out on Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day. I support the men and women in our military, but not the top brass who came up with these ideas for the evacuation and the president who agreed to them.
I am not sure when I’ll be standing to sing the National Anthem or recite Pledge of Allegiance. “And justice for all.” Carolyn Balliet
Mammoth