Unpublished Letter to the Editor
I can’t imagine why the Cumberland Times-News wouldn’t want to print this (from Progressive Talk):
Subject: warfare
Your newspaper can engage in a near-daily glorification of warfare under the guise of “honoring the veterans” but warfare is about murdering children, it ain’t about “serving your country.” And that goes equally for your “good” wars as well as your lost causes.
Thousands of innocent men, women and children were killed in the firebombing of Dresden and it served no useful military purpose, except to knock out the railroad lines for two days. Your glorious WWII veterans flattened one of the most beautiful cities in the world for no reason, other than because they had the power to do so. If your editors, and your town, want to continually glorify warfare and brutal militarism, mark my words there will be a reckoning.
Two of my own uncles fought in the Second World War. One was at the Battle of the Bulge and the other was stationed in England with the Army Air Corps. I have a direct ancestor who fought with the 12th WV Militia during the Civil War and was stationed in Cumberland for six months. Another ancestor was an officer with the Virginia Regular Infantry fighting for the south. Both of my grandmothers were Daughters of the American Revolution.
I was myself in the military. And because I choose to oppose war and consider Democratic-Socialism as the only real path toward liberty, I am considered persona non grata around this warmongering, reactionary region.
The Revolutionary War was fought mainly by dirt-poor farmers like my ancestors for the purpose of enabling rich, white landowners, the ruling class, to continue their lives of privilege. The Civil War was fought because the industrial north wanted to replace southern slave labor with their own cotton gins and other machinery. The “War to End All Wars” was fought for the purpose of dividing up the spoils after the breakdown of various European monarchies. The Second World War was fought not to defeat fascism so much as to ensure for the United States government the opportunity to engage in fascism itself. The Korean War was just a large imperial land-grab, and the United States invaded Vietnam and killed millions of peasants in order to gain control of the rubber plantations and oil resources for American business. The failed Iraq and Afghanistan wars are about securing oil and natural gas resources for U.S. big business.
Missing, as always, from the equation are the hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of murdered children–murdered for the purpose of enabling YOU to run a manipulative and deceitful newspaper.
Jan D. Tuckley
Ridgeley, WV
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