With Failure of Diplomacy, Pray for Safety of Innocents

My father was a Marine. I was born on a military base and for 17 years lived on those bases with a man whose life was the Corps. I was old enough to remember the day my father went to Vietnam. I didn’t understand why he was going, but I knew there was a chance he would not come back to us. Before he left, I took the $2 bill he had given me for luck and wrote “Please bring this back to me” on it and hid it in his duffel bag.

I hope everyone who still believes in hope will light a candle and pray for the fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters and friends who will fight in this war and that the bombs we drop on our fellow man will kill only the evildoers and not the innocents who die when grown men fail to achieve peaceful solutions because they lack the vision to do so.

Chari Spears

North Hollywood

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If this war with Iraq is supposed to make our nation safer, then how come the terror alert went up when President Bush declared it?

Maryanne Rose

Laguna Niguel

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After we have won the war against Iraq, we should take over its oil fields and sell oil to the world until we earn back all the money we spent to free the world of this horrendous monster, Saddam Hussein.

We should add $50 billion for the families of any servicemen killed or wounded in this conflict and also for the 9/11 families who lost their loved ones, as well as the costs of restructuring the area of the World Trade Center.

Jack Feigin

Beverly Hills

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Who declared war on Iraq? We did. Who’s the aggressor? We are. Who will be the invaders? We will. Who will call themselves liberators? We will. Who asked us to butt in? No one. Who gave us the right to do this? Jolly good question. Shades of Germany stampeding into Poland.

God help us. We’ve got madmen running the country.

Lucy M. Borik

La Palma

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As much as I detest Bush and his warmongering buddies, if America were to be invaded by a foreign power, I’d fight to protect my nation’s sovereignty.

Are we to expect the Iraqi people to do anything less?

Richard Meade

Los Angeles

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There are many sad legacies of World War II, and one of them is surely that it has allowed the likes of Bush to make specious comparisons between Adolf Hitler and Hussein. It would be nice if we were acting now out of high-minded principles, but the truth is that we armed Hussein for our own narrow interests and we’re removing him for our own narrow interests. Murderous regimes are hardly a novelty, but it’s a clear principle of American policy: We don’t mind dictators, as long as they’re our dictators.

Randy Ontiveros

Irvine

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Re “A Naked Bid to Redraw World Map,” Commentary, March 18: To logically argue any of Robert Scheer’s points would obviously fail to enlighten him, since his hate for Bush and the U.S. runs so deep. To put the security of the U.S. in the hands of the U.N. makes about as much sense as believing Hussein would willingly give up his weapons of mass destruction.

When has the United Nations prevented any war since its inception? Do Korea, Vietnam and Chechnya ring a bell? Prevented genocide? Cambodia, Rwanda, Somalia, Yugoslavia? Of course France, Russia and China don’t want war -- they’re all invested in Iraq. Scheer can place his trust in the U.N.; he has that liberty. Too bad millions of others had to pay with their lives for that “trust.”

Jeff Fernald

Honolulu

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The Bush speech Monday evening, following months of manufactured “evidence” for war, has plunged many Americans into a state of despair. How can a small group of misguided men succeed in perpetrating destruction on Iraq, the U.N. and our reputation and standing in the world? Thank you, Robert Scheer, for giving such eloquent voice to the desperate outrage of so many Americans.

Susanna D. Wilson

Buena Park

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I was listening to the president tell the world he was proceeding with his illegal and immoral war, when suddenly ... did my ears deceive me; could I be mistaken? He was issuing commands to the Iraqi soldiers. With grim determination he told them not to burn the oil wells, not to obey any command to use weapons of mass destruction. Amazing. I had no idea he was commander in chief of the Iraqi army. May all the gods and goddesses help us in the next months. Never before has so much arrogance been wedded to so much destructive power.

Joannie Parker

Los Angeles

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I was able to hear excerpts of British Prime Minister Tony Blair debating Tuesday in the House of Commons and was filled with inspiration as well as jealousy. What an articulate, intelligent man. I wonder if he would consider immigrating. Why can’t we have leaders like that? What is it about American politics that yields products such as Bush and Al Gore as choices for the “most powerful man on Earth”?

Carlos F. De los Rios

Thousand Oaks

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I have a new hero: House of Commons leader Robin Cook, who resigned Monday over Blair’s support of Bush’s attack on Iraq without U.N. support. If I were in his shoes, I wonder whether I would have the courage to quit my job too.

Mike Salcido

Monrovia