Concern for young Marine recruits
Re “Bound for the Corps,”
July 29
I was distraught and saddened after reading this article. The photos of newly recruited Steven Dellinger and Daniel Motamedi, frolicking at home before being shipped off to Iraq as Marine buddies, is in sharp contrast to the war-sacrificed service personnel displayed in your obituary column.
Do you suppose Dellinger and Motamedi, barely older than boys and, in Motamedi’s case at 17, not even eligible to vote, will be as joyful when they return home with limbs blown off and psyches forever scarred?
My question assumes, of course, that they will be fortunate enough to return home alive. The war will end when recruits like Dellinger and Motamedi throw down their weapons and refuse to fight, and the American people finally rise up and drive from our midst the warmongers at the highest levels of the government who brought us this inhumane debacle.
Kim W. Carney
Pasadena
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This story shows once again how hypocritical our society is. One boy’s parents support President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq but do not want their son to join the Corps for fear he may have to serve in Iraq, and possibly die.
Why it is OK for someone else’s son or daughter to die for their beliefs?
The Times also writes, “The four do not fit the stereotype of Marine recruits -- poor blacks and Latinos from the inner cities, lower-class whites from the rural South and Midwest, troubled kids escaping broken homes.” As a former Marine staff noncommissioned officer, let me clarify something. Marines are the top of the recruit tier in our country. I feel The Times owes all current and former Marines an apology, for we are not the dregs that you would like to make us out to be.
Lynda Davis
Long Beach
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I have to take exception to the remarks of Steven Dellinger’s father Jim: “I’m old-school. . . . I think any kid right out of high school should go to boot camp or something similar. That would straighten a lot of these kids out.” What?
Having them go to boot camp and most likely Iraq and then for them to return home possibly with post-traumatic stress disorder or minus a limb or maybe in a box? That’s not old-school, that’s asinine.
Steve Walker
La Habra