Military Heroes

* Please allow me to correct the Washington Connection column (March 10) that stated that I passionately speak about “the glories of wars past.” As an avid historian, a former journalist who covered the Vietnam War and other conflicts and someone who has had the privilege of knowing countless veterans, I know that war is anything but glorious. Gen. William Sherman was perfectly correct when he said, “War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.”

I believe that our Civil War was avoidable, as was World War I, Korea and Vietnam. (World War II was inevitable because of the bungling and slaughter of World War I.) What I regularly speak about is our nation’s military heroes (and police heroes), who glorify the American spirit through their selfless defense of freedom, democracy and their fellow countrymen. After all, we are living through the 50-year commemoratives of some of the most breathtaking deeds of self-sacrifice in all of history.

REP. ROBERT K. DORNAN

R-Garden Grove