Veteran, Dave Patterson, on Iraq War....

From Dave Patterson:

The Anti-war protesters know what all thinking Americans now understand,
that ending the Iraq occupation is now a national priority. The message at
Saturdays anti-war rally was that only Congress can stop the carnage, and
that Congress does not yet have the courage to do what’s right. A congress
without courage is not a new thing.

In the spring of 1972 the U.S. Air Force bombed North Vietnam relentlessly.
That same spring in Northern Thailand we received a Pentagon briefing
telling us that we were in fact losing the Vietnam War. They also told us
that the government had known for many years that we were losing the war,
and they asked us to keep up our work, so that the North would be forced to
the peace table and America could save face. In effect they were asking us
to keep killing indiscriminately, as bombs do, because our politicians didn’
t have the courage to stop a war that was clearly a tragic mistake.

By his own recollection, the then secretary of defense Robert McNamara
reported in December 1965 that there was little chance that Vietnam could be
won by military means. (1) The Congress failed to muster the courage to stop
the war for another 7 years, during which time we lost 49,000 more of our
own, killing more than a million Vietnamese soldiers, and likely another
million civilians. Vietnam and Iraq are wars that were never designed to be
won, except by a small group of war profiteers.

Today the lack of courage on the part of our Congress is why our sons,
daughters and many innocent people are dying in Iraq, clearly another war
that is a tragic mistake. Now is when our politicians will define
themselves in history by being courageous enough to extricate our military
from Iraq now, or show themselves to be cowards by allowing the momentum of
war to roll on. Don’t bet that they will do the right thing without our
help.

We citizens cannot stand passively by and let more die every day on all
sides for no good reason. Relentless pressure on Congress is the only means
to end the Iraq. We at Veterans For Peace urge all citizens, and
particularly Veterans to step up and lead the charge against Congress to end
the war in Iraq. We Veterans took an oath to protect and defend the
Constitution. That oath never expires.

(1) http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/11/interviews/mcnamara/
(2) http://www.rjsmith.com/kia_tbl.html


Dave Patterson
Immediate Past President
San Diego Veterans For Peace
www.SDVFP.org

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