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

[Jan & Durl Kruse]

A few minutes ago I was turning onto Bradley Avenue delivering yard  
signs for the Annette Williams campaign for Champaign City Council.   
There, smack in front of me was a parking lot full of used cars with  
a little American flags attached to the radio antenna fluttering in  
the wind.  I'm talking about close to a hundred!  What a sight!  What  
is the message?
Flags on cars.  Flags used by college democrats to represent  
America's dead in Iraq.
Somehow if we are opposed to this war, we must at times be skeptical  
of how the flag is both used and seen.  In this case,  Martin's  
concerns seem legitimate.  There has to be more fitting and  
meaningful symbol to represent the sacrifice of American servicemen  
and women than the symbol I saw flying on all those cars this afternoon.
DLK

On Mar 21, 2007, at 3:20 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

> 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
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss