Protesting War and Protesters
As one senior to another, I would like to remind the Leisure World peace activists (“Elder Statesmen of Peace,” Jan. 27) of some events that have happened in our lifetimes.
In 1931, when Japan invaded China, we wanted peace and decided that what happened to China was none of our business. In 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.
While he was British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain advocated peace and tried to find a diplomatic solution to the demands of Hitler. The result was that Hitler launched a blitzkrieg against London.
When the Iranians seized our embassy and took the staff hostage, this was, under international law, an act of war and we would have been justified in telling Iran that they had “X” amount of time to get our hostages back to us or we would come in and get them if we had to wipe Iran off the face of the earth to do it.
We did not do that, and the lack of action had two results. One result was that still more hostages were taken, thus imperiling more individual human beings than were in peril originally. The other result was that, not liking what Iran had done but having been too chicken to take care of the matter ourselves, we let Iraq attack Iran, an attack that did displease some of us because it was an unprovoked aggression.
With our having stood by so many times while aggressions were going on, Husseindecided that it would be safe to attack Kuwait and we, again, opted to try a diplomatic solution first.
While this effort at “giving peace a chance” was going on, two things were happening. One was that, instead of caving in, Hussein was digging in in Kuwait. The other thing was that Saddam was raping and pillaging Kuwait. We do know that this happened, but we do not know the full extent because of the tight censorship.
The fact of the matter is that Hussein is a bully and, as we all know, bullies, whether they are school ground bullies or wife beaters or despots, continue being bullies until they are stopped by some outside authority.
JUANITA MATASSA, Santa Ana