When Liberty Comes From the Barrel of a Gun

Like the neoconservatives who brought us this war on Iraq, Victor Davis Hanson (Commentary, April 10) confuses two separate principles: fighting for one’s own freedom and preemptive attack. A name like Operation Iraqi Freedom deliberately equates the two, but Hanson’s histories of war show the importance of acts of self-liberation that cannot be performed by proxy. The only people who can liberate the Iraqis are the Iraqis themselves, in whatever way they can manage in keeping with their own values.

Our current leaders like to tie liberty to a willingness to wage war on others. History shows liberty depends more basically on a willingness to defend one’s own society in order to build the rule of law, political equality, universal suffrage, free speech and other civic freedoms sustained by the peaceful labor of farmers, shopkeepers, doctors, teachers, engineers, writers and everyone else whose work conquest interrupts.

Chris Newfield

Santa Barbara

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So Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld compared the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue to the fall of the Berlin Wall (April 10)? That’s funny, I don’t remember American Marines at the Brandenburg Gate using tanks to pull down sections of the wall while a few dozen Germans stood by and watched. How did they manage to liberate themselves from Soviet domination without a preemptive U.S. invasion and occupation?

M.J. Johnson

San Luis Obispo

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As a descendant of Civil War Union Army Col. Elmer E. Ellsworth, I encourage humility in our U.S. forces in Iraq (photo of a Marine placing the American flag on Hussein’s statue, April 10). Unca Elmer, a law partner of Abraham Lincoln before the war, brazenly replaced a Confederate flag with a U.S. flag atop a hotel in Arlington, Va., in the first days of the war. A Confederate loyalist rendered -- on the spot -- Ellsworth a posthumous Union hero-to-be.

Lincoln wrote an eloquent and moving letter of condolence to my family. That letter is a prized document in the Huntington Library in San Marino. Small solace to Ellsworth and his family. Pride cometh before a fall.

William Ellsworth

Hoffine

San Diego

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I note that the president and Defense secretary are wearing gratified smiles to see the people of Iraq, liberated from the iron boot of Hussein, celebrating in the streets. One particular expression of their newfound freedom is the way the Iraqis are looting from end to end of Basra and Baghdad. We see that certain palaces and hotels have been “picked clean” of everything that could be carried away. Call it, if you will, intelligent self-interest, as American as apple pie. It seems they can gut a hotel with one hand and with the other wave the liberator’s flag at the incoming tanks. Good luck with their hearts and minds.

Stephen Carnovsky

Los Angeles

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I was impressed by the photos of Iraqis enthusiastically practicing capitalism with their newfound democracy barely hours old (April 10). The captions referred to it as “looting,” but come on -- people using an unfortunate situation, unfettered by morals or ethics, justified by a technicality in the law (or in this case no laws at all), to profit at the expense of others? Actually, that does sound a lot like looting. Better check with Halliburton, et al., when they get there. Maybe they can explain the difference.

Errol Miller

Chino

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Is there any truth to the report out of the White House that Sean Penn, George Clooney and Martin Sheen have been invited to go to Baghdad as guests of the Bush administration to serve as grand marshals of the Operation Iraqi Freedom victory parade?

William S. Koester

Anaheim

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By demonstrating the use of our massive military might by invading Iraq, we have provided complete justification to all nations seeking to engage in enormous military buildups of their own to defend their sovereignty.

Albert A. Glick

West Covina

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Are we safer and freer? I am thrilled that our valiant troops have won the “war” with Iraq and I applaud their bravery. That said, however, I must admit I don’t feel one bit safer or freer than I did a month ago and would have been doubly thrilled if we had spent all that money on liberating our citizens from the yoke of inadequate schools, a crumbling infrastructure and all the other domestic ills that plague our society.

Joel Rapp

Los Angeles

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George Feinstein (letter, April 10) writes: “In general terms, a woman can probably best serve our war effort by doing charitable or office work, where her bones and breasts are somewhat safer from stray bullets and hands.” What rot. Women served in combat in the Revolutionary and Civil wars, even if disguised as men, and women have fought in wars in almost every culture from the beginning of time.

America does itself no good by continuing to infantilize women by insisting they “keep themselves safe” by sitting behind desks. Women do make good soldiers, and if they’re at risk of rape or torture, so are the men who also serve. Both are equally at risk of dying. If one gender is fit to serve and die, so is the other.

Kris Dotto

Brea