[Peace] Re: [Peace-discuss] misgivings on Iraq War: A Four Year Reflection

[C. G. Estabrook]

I think Martin Smith's points in objection to this proposal are well 
taken.  It's certainly worthwhile to try to seize the flag back and make 
it stand for American ideals  -- those "self-evident truths" (which 
implied BTW that no state has a right to exist) -- but I'm not sure that 
that can be done simply by having the right intention.

What would we say about people -- even if they called themselves 
anti-war -- who commemorated members of the Wehrmacht who died in the 
occupation of France by a display of German flags? or those who did a 
similar thing for Russian soldiers dead in the invasion of Hungary in 1956?

I'd like to see AWARE join Martin in addressing the College Democrats on 
this matter.  In addition to what he wrote, I'd also note

	[1] AWARE sponsored a similar installation (and a number of AWARE 
people worked hard on it), but with the crucial difference Martin calls 
for -- it "utilized boots."

	[2] I must admit that I had some hesitation about even that earlier 
display (not of course about the commitment of the people who put it 
together).  This war is not wrong because thousands of Americans have 
died: it's wrong for other reasons.  In a just war, we honor the 
sacrifice of those who fight it, and when we do that we imply that the 
war is just, even if we deny it.  Americans are surely capable of 
accepting even far higher casualties, if they think the war is just. 
The government tries to avoid that debate by insisting "that these dead 
shall not have died in vain" only if "the mission is accomplished."

	[3] The College Democrats proclaim themselves anti-war (as they did at 
the March 15 campus demo) while the Congressional Democrats are working 
strenuously *in favor* of the supplemental appropriation to provide $124 
billion more to kill people in Iraq and Afghanistan, and their anointed 
presidential candidates are proposing the continuation of the war policy 
-- just run better than the Republicans are doing it.   (E.g., Clinton 
says that troops must stay in Iraq; Obama claims he "opposed this war 
from the start" because it "was a bad idea: It's going to cost us 
millions of dollars and thousands of lives" -- not because it's wrong or 
illegal or immoral.)

In these circumstances, Martin's misgivings seem well-founded.  --CGE