Daniel Brown’s recent column, “A lifetime of unnecessary wars,” [Recorder, March 25] was particularly of interest to me because we share the same lifetime. War is itself a crime against humanity, in my opinion, and extremely wasteful! This country has also abandoned any pretense of paying for these wars.
I agreed with most of his comments except regarding the response to Iraq invading Kuwait. It may have been to protect “our” oil supply, but there was another motive, which I believe was relevant then and still is: protecting territorial boundaries.
President George H.W. Bush assembled a unified force under the aegis of the United Nations to force Iraq out of Kuwait. There were many who said they should have continued the war and overturned the regime of Saddam Hussain then, but that was not the clearly defined mission of the military alliance, which was to preserve the territorial integrity of Kuwait and get out.
It is a shame the United States has not continued that commitment to territorial integrity. Had the United Nations assembled a force to challenge Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Russia might not have felt secure in invading Ukraine a few years later. It might not have been possible, with Russia having veto power in the UN, but NATO could have acted somehow to make it less easy for Russia to push its narrative that Ukraine was historically a part of Russia, as China is now doing with Taiwan.
By the way, I remember doing a paper in high school about the Chinese nationalists taking over the island of Formosa, which is now Taiwan. The current majority population probably is Chinese, having overcome the indigenous population as we did the Native Americans, and their claim to Taiwan is probably better than Russia’s to Ukraine, but where is the U.S. commitment to territorial integrity? Under our current administration, absolutely none.
I wanted to share another aspect of wars since I have been old enough to remember them. I was born at the end of Word War II, so I don’t remember any of that, but I do remember seeing posters advertising war bonds. I was in grammar school during the Korean conflict (police action). I remember buying stickers for 10 cents each to fill up a booklet that would then be exchanged for a $25 savings bond. These were to fund the war. (I expect adults just bought the bonds.) During the Vietnam War there was a surcharge on the federal income tax to help fund that war. There was at least some attempt to fund the wars.
We have long since abandoned any pretense that we are paying our way. Where is the outrage of the Republican Party at the increasing deficits and the ballooning national debt? We only hear about them when there is a Democrat administration. I would like to see a graph showing our rising deficits every day on the evening news. (I actually wouldn’t like to see it, but we are putting a tremendous burden on the people who will be left with this mess when those of us of my generation are gone.)
Judith Truesdell lives in Greenfield.