[Peace-discuss] Letter in response to my letter

[David Green]

Military service a positive experience

Our local iconoclast and critic of American life, David Green, writes that our armed forces are predominantly drawn from the economically underprivileged “to serve as potential cannon fodder and cops on the beat.” He concludes, “these predominantly working-class individuals serve … the interests of the capitalist class and sacrifice only to the latter’s benefit.”

First, I dislike “working man/working-class” terminology because, while long employed in management and thereby disqualified as a “working man,” I consistently worked more hours per week (including every Saturday and Sunday) than the typical Monday through Fri- day “working man.”

But that is not my primary dispute with Green’s views. To realize that military service offers many positives to “working-class individuals,” one has but to read what Seon Williams, this year’s Dr. Martin Luther King Outstanding Achievement Awardee, said about his six-plus years of service: “It was the best thing I could have ever done.”

Williams credits his success as an entrepreneur to the “discipline, responsibility, initiative, leadership and positive attitude” he learned in the service.

Thousands of oncedisadvantaged men and women have been positively impacted by their valued service to their country. To many, our armed forces offer employable skills and self-confidence as alternatives to a life of poverty or crime.

Honoring veterans is anything but “propaganda” and “manipulative promotion.”

PETER T. TOMARAS Champaign
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20190119/8be1b677/attachment.html>