The Sin of War-Making

By Jim Porto

The letter below is what I had in mind with this Card–I take no satisfaction in being justified in my belief. I still marvel at the tortuous logic being used to sustain our presence in Iraq. Failure to see consequences that are as plain as day is shear stupidity. It goes without saying that the Bush administration will certainly achieve the distinction of being the most incompetent administration since that of Warren G. Harding.

Written in outrage (March 2003)

I am a Viet Nam vet. I flew helicopters from Marble Mountain for the Marines. I got shot at more than once, flew in some tight spaces, had the living daylights scared out of me flying night medevac in the mountains south of Danang, and rode a CH-46 fully loaded with combat Marines into the side of a hill (we all survived). I am angry, and I apologize up front.

While I was volunteering for service in 1968 much to the chagrin of my family, our President, George W. Bush, was having strings pulled to jump ahead 150 other applicants in line to the Texas Air National Guard. His daddy, you see, was a big shot. If you remember, anyone who didn’t have the stomach for Viet Nam and was too chicken to be an outright protestor of the war wanted to go into the Guard. Our Prez is such a man.

This is not the worst part. Now he wants to send 200,000 good men and women to war on the flimsiest of excuses. Having avoided the test himself, he appears to have no qualms about ordering others into combat. The issue is not Saddam Hussein. The guy is the worst dictator since Hitler. But that’s not why our Prez says we need to fight him. He says that we are being threatened by this tin-pot dictator and have to take him out.

This obsession with Iraq appears to have several unseemly motivations: the Prez’s daddy, the same one who got him into the Texas Air National Guard, was humiliated by Saddam and now the son wants vengeance; half of Bush’s top appointees come from the oil industry and the rancid smell of oil is all over this policy; and GW’s personal angst over having avoided testing his manhood in battle is now to be vicariously lived through the lives of men and women who, as good soldiers and Marines, will do as they are ordered.

The only praise I can give the President is that he has taken up the sound liberal cause of ridding the world of dictators who most horrifically violate the human rights of their citizens. But this is not the reason he gives, nor is he consistent in applying his new found liberal ideology to other tin-pot dictators. Saddam can be, and is, contained. We need to solve the Israeli problem with a more balanced approach to the Palestinians, and then give Arab nations the responsibility of ridding the world of Saddam.

I urge all active and retired military personnel to rise up in protest against this pretender and to send email, snail mail, and phone messages to the white house to protest this travesty.