L e t t e r s
To the editor:
Your inclusion of the joke about Bush and the Roe v. Wade decision was
offensive and entirely inappropriate for an organization which professes to
be committed to "creative responses to conflict." Not only was the joke
close to being stale, it also reflected badly on our organization, which
just might include more of the President's supporters than you think. In the
future, let's all try to avoid enhancing the negative images of our leaders,
which are foisted on us by the media, the talk-show hosts, the comedians,
etc., and just stick to the issues. Yours is supposed to be a classy
newsletter, and this joke just did not belong.
Sincerely,
Robert L. Card, D.D.S.
We Ought to be Ashamed
To the Editor:
To those not preoccupied with the danger to the world of the U.S. military
industrial complex Peace Talk is an immediate turnoff. The average citizen
does not believe this country is at war, and promptly discards the
publication as some kind of "nervous Nelly" insanity. Reading about a peace
essay competition concerning the establishment of a U.S. Department of Peace
or "Peace Begins at Home" they could easily dismiss PAM's mission as a
replay of "chicken little."
The federal government has embraced the military industrial complex and the
insane preservation of our cold war arsenal of 15,000 nuclear warheads aimed
at targets all over the world, ready to go as surely today as at the height
of the cold war. Additionally, the defense complex is hard at work
increasing the sophistication and destructive power of that arsenal by
reviving the star wars fantasy and using U.S. global domination in nuclear
and other military weaponry to intimidate other countries.
With President Bush in the pocket of the arms purveyors we have reason for
alarm. And the average person has no awareness of the fragility of the peace
we presently enjoy.
The American public did not end the Vietnam War by accepting without
question what the military told them about how well it was going. No. They
turned out in the streets and overwhelmed the military establishment and the
domino theory justification for the war. We did not talk "peace" then. We
talked "anti-war." I think PAM's focus should be to alarm the public, to
stir us up, to get us fighting mad at the corruption that is the military
industrial complex, and also at the way the U.S. flexes its military muscle.
The image of the one remaining superpower in the world is very close to
Adolph Hitler's master race stance.
We do not get along with our neighbors by brandishing a gun. We talk
quietly. If we have problems we try to see the other side of it, and to help
each other. After World War I we established the League of Nations, after
World War II the United Nations. The lesson of war is that it solves no
problem. It is an insane display of ever-increasing destructiveness of life,
infrastructure, community, and everything that makes life worth living. We
in the United States have not yet experienced nuclear war. Now we're gearing
up for global destruction. We ought to be ashamed.
Norman Tate
Port Clyde
Back to Peace Talk Index, Summer, 2001