Greetings from small-town Missouri, where we don’t fruitlessly protest the war, but we support the troops who give us our freedom. We Missourians always have, and I strongly suspect we always will.
I am pleased to see Eugene was the place of a troop support rally, but am disappointed, while not surprised, that Portland was the scene of an anti-war protest. I don’t care that people protest; that is our right as Americans, but I can not see why people waste their time protesting a war they cannot stop.
I spent a little more than a year in Oregon, and after a while in your beautiful state, I realized I had to get out. I came thinking I would find a state of open-minded acceptance but what I found was narrow-minded ignorance.
For the most part, the consensus of Oregonians I came in contact with illustrated their obliviousness to true America and the way this great nation works. I ask for any Oregonian who thinks the country feels the way they do to hop on a plane and visit small-town U.S.A.
Take a trip to a state that falls between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, where there are no illusionary college students and faculty members. By doing so, Oregonians might capture the true essence of America, the spirit that has led us this far.
I’m sure you lofty university students believe you are smarter than the rednecks and inbreds you will find in these rural locations, but perhaps that small-town ignorance is why we are here today. I mean, you couldn’t be too smart to storm the beaches of Normandy, with German bullets slamming into your fellow soldiers’ heads.
But then again, thousands did take that beach, and thousands of small-town men and women continue to fight for our freedom today. America was built by the farmer and the factory worker, not the ideological college student.
I know there are Oregonians, as evidenced by the troop support rally, who realize the purpose of our being in Iraq.
I am not naive enough to believe we should believe everything our government tells us, and I am actually quite cynical. But there comes a time when you have to choose between what is beneficial to society and what is not.
Anti-war protests, at this point, do nothing to raise the bar for which our society should be measured. This is not 1969, and we are not in Vietnam.
Just over a year ago we witnessed an attack on America like we had never seen before, and that forced me to realize we here in the states are no longer immune to hatred and bigotry. Forget the reasons why we are hated ­ I can do nothing about the past and neither can you.
You say we should not let fear fuel a thirst for blood, but I say enough is enough. When do you protesters believe America is justified in going to war? Would we have ever fought World War II if thousands had not died at Pearl Harbor?
Pacifism breeds death, death for a nation and a people. I, for one, enjoy my life, and am proud to support those who are willing to die so that I may keep it.