Thanks for the Support (Yeah, Right)

With a hat-tip to Best of the Web Today...

Take a gander at the Letters to the Editor of the Los Angeles Times. These are in response to an article about a Marine who died in Iraq.

Marine's wartime acts bring mixed reactions
October 7, 2006


Re "His Corps Value Was Bravery," Column One, Oct. 3

If an individual were to kill 11 people in house-to-house gang warfare in South Los Angeles, we wouldn't call him a hero; we'd call him a bloodthirsty, homicidal maniac. We would fear for the future of our city.

But when it's war, we nominate these individuals for one of the nation's highest honors. We spend several hundred billion dollars to send thousands of our young adults overseas so they can engage in this kind of behavior in someone else's country.

The 11 people we dismiss as insurgents are mourned by their own families, some of whom consider their actions a logical response to a foreign power occupying their land, while others grieve at the senselessness of it all.

The Times has shown its support for the troops, like we're all expected to do. But if Marine Pfc. Christopher Adlesperger had been a street gang member, we would have been subjected to articles explaining how we needed to provide alternatives to murderous organizations that provide a sense of belonging to its members.

T.C. PETERSON
Los Angeles


Reading about Adlesperger's valor, while compelling, left me with an overwhelming sadness. We are apparently hard-wired to kill each other over land or oil or our gods. Imagine what a man with the passion of Adlesperger could have done for his family and for the world in the next 60 years had he lived. I admire his bravery and loyalty to his friends. But I condemn those who required this of him and more than 2,000 of his brothers. I only wish his bravery could have been spent as a firefighter or a police officer, at home, where we need him more than ever.

GEORGE WATERS
Pasadena


I was repulsed by the tone of The Times' article. How dare you glorify the obscenity of killing, with descriptions of gurgling blood. Maybe the so-called Iraqi insurgents are not the enemy but in fact are freedom fighters, valiantly attempting to rid their country of a repugnant foreign presence fighting not for freedom and democracy but for America's insatiable appetite for oil. The United States must end this senseless war, sooner rather than later, and articles like this espousing flag-waving patriotism are only perpetuating the myth that modern war, and this one in particular, can be won.

RUSS RODDERBACK
Las Vegas

Thank you for your support... All of them enjoy the freedom, and right, to express these views because (I can't resist) we are an ARMY STRONG.