War, Duty and Death
Re “War and Duty: Why I Didn’t Look Away,” Opinion, Nov. 28: Kevin Sites is a courageous journalist. He had a choice. Should he release footage of an American Marine putting the fatal bullet into an injured Iraqi or not? He knew that what he had on tape would change the thought process of many Americans. As a single mother of a 6-year-old daughter, I have many misgivings about any of our troops being in Iraq. This said, I admire all the men and women who put their hearts and souls out there every day to do what they feel is right.
Sites’ reporting is one of the few completely unbiased portrayals of the brutal choices that our soldiers in Iraq face. I was not there and so I cannot know how that Marine made the decision that he did. I do know in my heart that he made the right decision for himself at that time and at that moment. We need to respect the tough choices that our servicemen make when faced with life-threatening situations. And in the end, we certainly don’t need to condemn the media for informing us of the reality of war.
Lynn Edlund
Pacific Palisades
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The image of an American Marine shooting a wounded, disarmed man raises the question: If you murder a murderer, what are you, and who is the victim, who is the guilty? I, for one, accept Sites’ last statement in this excerpt: “The burdens of war, as you so well know, are unforgiving for all of us.” Therefore, it is not that young Marine with the rifle who must carry the burden of guilt, but we, you and I, as well, who have yielded the power to our federal government’s administration to put that young man and thousands like him into similar situations.
I wonder if so many of us living in this country have become so numbed and insensitive to the daily news of those terrible events in an alien land, so far away from our everyday lives, that we have become incapable of feeling outrage and disgust about this carnage.
Chuck Hackwith
San Clemente
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I read Sites’ lecture to the Marines and almost puked. He is the worst kind of fraud, one who takes himself seriously and expects us to. These Marines are teenagers and young men mostly younger than 21. They are now trained killers who deal out death as casually as they take it. To be effective in combat they must be so. Ernie Pyle understood that. Too bad Mr. Sites doesn’t.
Bob Herrera
Covina