Barbarous acts accompany war

Regarding the Wednesday letter, “Marines’ actions are unacceptable”:

Yes, the writer has lived 50 years of her life “believing that Americans are above that kind of barbarism…” She probably also believes in the tooth fairy, Father Christmas, that gentlemen never read each others’ letters and that wars are won by just doing the right thing. Clearly, her heart is in the right place; unfortunately, her mind is in the clouds.

When an electorate authorizes sending the young to war, it also tacitly approves of the way they conduct their war. If you don’t approve, in a representative democracy, you change leaders.

Examine Abraham Lincoln’s conduct of the Civil War. Gens. Grant, Sherman and Sheridan understood that until innocent civilian populations of the South were made to understand that war was hell, the war would never end. Starvation of innocent civilians was a righteous and acceptable tool in meeting military objectives; witness Vicksburg in 1863.

President Franklin Roosevelt, in an effort to cripple the German arms industry, authorized the strategic daylight bombing of German cities, fully knowing innocent civilians would be killed. Presidents Roosevelt and Truman knowingly approved the nightly fire bombing of Japanese cities and then, under Truman’s orders, large portions of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were vaporized. War is the worst thing that one group of humans can inflict on another. Since Vietnam, the writer and millions of other Americans have been led to believe that war will always be conducted in an ethical, righteous and principled manner. This is a disingenuous belief.

So, the next time your elected officials, including your congressional representatives and senators, send your volunteer military into the world to keep you safe and free, please don’t presume to be surprised or shocked when one of them commits a barbarous act. To do so is unseemly; after all, bad things happen in war, that’s why it’s called war.

H.G. “Woodie” Sprouse

Mill Creek