Murder verses fight for life
Letter to the Editor: Sam Kautz
I recently had a conversation with my father about his time in the military, and specifically, his time fighting in the Vietnam War.
He told me of the men he was close to, the battles he was involved in and of his return home.
Instead of a hero’s welcome home, angry protestors greeted him. Men and women held signs and some, preaching hate, attempted to spit on the returning soldiers.
He fought for the freedom of his neighbors and their children, and there they were protesting the sacrifice he, and soldiers like him, made so they could have the right to freely express themselves.
I also recently had a conversation with a co-worker attempting to persuade my thoughts on war in the opposite direction.
She informed me that any soldier, including my father, was a murderer, saying soldiers take life unnecessarily in shows of brute force for hollow causes.
While I do not stand by every factor shaping war in United States history, I stand by the men and women who fought for the freedom of a nation under God.
Their bravery and courage would at times lead them to death.
Their honor and courage led them away from their families, some of them to never return, and because of that you can now speak openly of your love for a God upon whom this nation was founded.
And as this nation falls further from God and the knowledge of what it means to be American, its people lose sight of America. The flag of a great nation under a mighty God waves here, but it casts a shadow on people who reject it for complacency.
The fathers of this nation made great effort at great cost to build this country. They fought bravely, they believed strongly and they prospered because of it.
A great figure in American history once said, “I have never advocated war except as a means of peace.”
Ulysses S. Grant was saying war is not to be viewed as a first action, but that it could and will be needed.
If we begin to see war as only a plague upon this nation, it will not long be ours.
John Stewart Mill exemplifies all I say in a single statement.
“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.”
