LETTERS ON
THE LATEST WARS

The following were sent to the letters section of the Washington Post. As far as we know, the Post did not print any of them.

October 2, 2001

Dear Editor:

Before your columnists and readers wheel out more artillery to fire at the pacifists, they should consider this: We would be far better off if Osama bin Laden and company were pacifists. Instead of planning terrorist attacks, they would have organized nonviolent rallies and marches to protest U.S. policy in the Mideast. Bin Laden might have used his fortune for a public-education campaign in the U.S. to explain: 1) how Israel and the U.S. have been unjust to the Palestinians; 2) how huge U.S. arms sales have encouraged the violence that plagues the Mideast; 3) why they want U.S. troops out of Saudi Arabia.

Had they done this, though, would we have listened? We do not have a good record of listening to peaceful Arabs, Israelis and Americans who have tried to make such points.

Many Americans are so angry about the terrible events of September 11th that they want to quash all criticism of our government. But that is a short road to more and greater suffering--for our own country and many others.

Sincerely,

Mary Meehan

October 27, 2001

Dear Editor:

"...the people are dying and there is no one to listen to us. I must get to President Bush and the others and tell them they are making a terrible mistake," said Afghan taxi driver Mohammed Sardar ("Plaintive Afghan's Plea from Community: Stop the Bombing," Post, Oct. 24).

The U.S. government, having found the money to bomb Mr. Sardar's already-bombed-over country, should find a little more to fly him to Washington so he can make his plea to President Bush. He could tell the president how he and others buried a family killed by an American bomb-- and how other families are terrified that they may be next. Besides destroying homes and families, U.S. bombs have hit a hospital and a mosque and and have twice attacked and heavily damaged a warehouse complex of the International Red Cross. American bombing also has killed guards at a de-mining facility--a facility desperately needed because of land mines given to Afghan groups by the U.S. and other nations in the past.

Many Americans support Mr. Sardar when he says: "Iran, Russia, the Americans--they all gave these groups money to kill our brothers and sisters....Now we are asking them all, please do not intervene again. Go away and leave us in peace."

Sincerely,

Mary Meehan

December 1, 2001

Dear Editor:

Post commentators and others are proposing more economic aid and policy intervention in Third-World countries as a way of preventing terrorism.

Yet our intervention in the lives of other nations has caused terrorist attacks against us in the first place. Doing more of the wrong thing will not help matters; it will make them worse.

Our government has dictated other countries' economic policies through aid programs and the IMF; suppressed other nations' birth rates through population-control programs; subsidized certain political parties abroad; overthrown governments it did not like; propped up repressive governments against their own people; and--without even bothering to declare war--run ferocious bombing campaigns that have killed many innocent people.

Americans would not tolerate this for one minute if another nation--Russia or China, for example--tried to do it to us.

Commentators such as Michael Kelly claim that American critics of U.S. foreign policy are "anti-American." Do they expect us to run away from ethical responsibility for what is done in our names? Do they want us to remain silent while interventionists try to remake the world in the U.S. image--thus generating more hatred and more terrorism?

Carl Schurz, an army general and U.S. senator of the 1800s, put it this way: "My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right."

Sincerely,

Mary Meehan

January 31, 2002

Dear Editor:

Instead of questioning the interventionist foreign policy which got us into so much trouble in the first place, President Bush's State of the Union address suggests more intervention abroad.

This is not surprising, though, because so many presidential advisers have for decades promoted U.S. intervention in the politics and economics of Third-World nations. Interventionism has led to embargoes, wars, and bombing campaigns--harming many innocent people and creating great hatred of the United States.

That hatred, and the evil terrorism it produces, will not end unless we return to the modest and peaceful foreign policy recommended by President George Washington.

"Observe good faith and justice toward all nations," Washington urged in his Farewell Address. "Cultivate peace and harmony with all." In extending commercial relations with other nations, he said, we should "have with them as little political connection as possible." He asked, "Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground?"

When we think we are smarter than the great Washington, and ignore his wise advice, we produce misery for ourselves and for many people around the world.

Sincerely,

Mary Meehan

April 3, 2002

Dear Editor:

People who have been oppressed often respond in evil ways, including terrorism against civilians. Americans of the 1700s and 1800s broke treaties and stole land from the American Indians. The Indians responded with massacres, scalping and torture.

Israelis, with their occupation and land-grabbing, have treated Palestinians much as our ancestors treated the American Indians. Now the Palestinian suicide bombers retaliate by murdering Israeli civilians.

The U.S. government has intervened repeatedly in the Mideast-- overthrowing a government here, propping up another there, arming the Israelis against the Palestinians, stoking the arms race everywhere, stationing U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia. The murderers of September 11th responded by killing thousands of our civilians.

We are right to condemn massacres wherever they occur. But we are wrong to condone or support the deep injustice that provokes them.

The United States and Israel will not have peace until we stop pushing other people around. Both countries should accept the Saudis' peace proposal before the whole Mideast goes up in flames.

Sincerely,

Mary Meehan

October 12, 2002

Dear Editor:

Many who debate the proposed war against Iraq miss an elephant in the room. The United States has far more weapons of mass destruction in its nuclear arsenal than most Iraqis--or Americans--can even comprehend. And the U.S. is the only nation that has ever used atomic weapons against another nation, killing huge numbers of Japanese civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Under the "Bush Doctrine," would these facts justify another nation--China, for example--in attacking us so that we can never use nuclear weapons against them?

The war hawks do not seem to worry about what will happen when the doctrine of preemptive war is turned against us. Do they think the United States can defy history, win every war, and stay on top as long as the world endures?

Not very likely.

Sincerely,

Mary Meehan

February 19, 2003

Dear Editor:

United Nations efforts to disarm Iraq will be far more impressive if other UN members start disarming themselves--and stop selling weapons all over the world.

Nuclear arms and biological weapons aren't the only things we should worry about, either. So-called "conventional weapons"--such as napalm, cluster bombs and land mines--are extremely cruel and painful in their effects on soldiers and civiians alike.

Instead of using such weapons against the people of Iraq, the United States should lead an effort to get rid of them as well as the nukes and the biological weapons.

This would reduce the power of governments in a way that should appeal to conservatives and others (billions of people, in fact) who want to be left alone to live their lives in peace. As President Dwight Eisenhower once said, "I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it."

Sincerely,

Mary Meehan

March 6, 2003

Dear Editor:

As the old empire (Great Britain) and the new empire (the USA) lurch toward yet another war, people around the world are telling us that they want an end to empires altogether. They are tired of being pushed around.

Many Americans, too, want an end to the interventionist U.S. foreign policy that has produced so much misery for ourselves and others. Many of us object to interventionism on constitutional grounds. And many believe that its price--in dollars and in loss of civil liberties--is simply too high.

Can anything prevent the war that most of the world doesn't want? Two things might: 1) creative diplomacy to provide an outcome that allows face-saving for all countries involved; and 2) more courage on Capitol Hill, especially among Republicans who privately worry about what their president is doing.

When the Vietnam War was lurching from one disaster to another, senior Democrats in the U.S. Senate had the courage to speak out against the policies of Democratic president Lyndon B. Johnson. When that failed to rein LBJ in, one of the dissenters, Gene McCarthy of Minnesota, challenged him directly in the presidential campaign of 1968. McCarthy started a chain reaction that changed his party's policy and helped turn the country against the war.

Come on Republicans; it's your turn. Let's see some profiles in courage.

Sincerely,

Mary Meehan

April 9, 2003

Dear Editor:

Post editors make extremely careful selections of war photos from Iraq. They avoid ones of wounded U.S. and British soldiers. They avoid ones showing Iraqi bodies--sometimes entire families--battered or dismembered by U.S. bombing. They do not show photos of people in agony from severe burn wounds that may produce a lifetime of pain. Yet some Post reporters, especially Anthony Shadid in Baghdad, honestly report such horrors.

Perhaps editors justify photographic self-censorship on grounds of good taste and a desire to avoid shocking small children here in the U.S. Yet less noble motives may also play a role. Advertisers might be unhappy to see such ugly reality intruding upon their daily efforts to promote a consumer's paradise here at home. Editors who support the war might fear that more citizens will turn against it if they see too much reality.

The Post also engages in self-censorship about the decades-long war on unborn children. It does not show their dismembered bodies, either.

You can guard the innocence of small children by careful placement of photos. Don't put the gruesome ones on the front pages. Show them only with advance warning, and only on the inside pages. But do show them. The failure to do so gives your readers an unreal, propagandistic view of the war.

Sincerely,

Mary Meehan

October 2, 2004

Dear Editor:

What if President Bush and Senator Kerry are both wrong about Iraq and terrorism? What if the support for terrorism is mainly a response to our intervention in other nations' affairs?

Many people around the world hate us--not because they hate freedom--but because we have invaded their countries(Grenada, Panama, Iraq) and/or killed many of their fellow citizens with our bombing campaigns (Vietnam, Cambodia, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq).

As Will Rogers once said, "It will take America fifteen years steady taking care of our own business and letting everybody else's alone to get us back to where everybody speaks to us again."

Sincerely,