Response to Letter to the Editor, Herald Democrat 01/21/2006

We must fight in Iraq or on streets in U.S.
In November 2004, the U.S. Marines launched an assault on Fallugha. Some, perhaps all, of the companies involved had reporters “imbedded” with the troops to post eyewitness reports.
Our grandson, Capt. Read Omohumdro, was in command of Bravo Company, First Battalion, Eighth Marines. His company was the “spear point” of the assault. Imbedded with Bravo was Dexter Filkins, a New York Times reporter. Filkins posted an eyewitness story of the action of that battle. Newspapers and other media all over the country republished Filkins’ reports. After Dallas area television stations learned that the Captain’s mother, your youngest daughter, Virginia Ammons, lived in Hurst, reporters were to her home for on-camera interviews.
Our Marine came home in January 2005, but is now back in Iraq to train Iraqi soldiers and police to face up to the insurgency and gain control of the streets and alleyways of Baghdad and the lesser cities that are the battlefields of sectarian violence that threatens a fledging representative government that has not yet tasted the sweetness of liberty.
I am sick of the self-styled “experts” who spew their platitudes about what is and what is not the proper course of action to conclude this battle for the liberty that the common people of Iraq so richly deserve. Their unconscionable rhetoric, first claiming we did not have enough troops on the ground, then threatening to withhold funds for additional troops, cannot help but give aid to the enemy.
If those who claim to be capable leaders of this country cannot understand we have been at war with the Arab world since 1979, they are the problem rather than the solution. When U.S. Embassy personnel were held captive for 442 days and our embassies, ships and military personnel were attacked without provocation, that was war and continues as war. We are at war with Iraq. If we do as some suggest and remove our troops from Iraq, we will still be at war, except that it will intensify and we will see it in the cities and on the streets of this nation.
James W. Farris
Sherman

Response to "We must fight in Iraq or on streets in U.S."
Mr. Farris is obviously proud of his grandson’s accomplishments and service to the nation. We are indeed fortunate to have brave men and women like Capt. Omohumdro and we salute there sacrifice and continued service. However, we must not forget that America blundered into this catastrophe chiefly because its Republican president lied to all of us about the reason to go to war. The Bush administration scared us spitless by constantly spewing propaganda of weapons of mass destruction, mushroom clouds, biological weapons and poison gas. They said a society traumatized by a harsh dictatorship would greet us as liberators with flowers and dancing in the streets. When that lie was finally uncovered they led us to believe that the United States could transform a country seething with ancient tribal and religious hatred into a liberal democracy. Now the line is we must fight them there or fight them here or that if we leave Iraq they will follow us home. The reasons change year to year and day to day but one thing is now very clear this conflict is a civil war and it will have to be settled by the different Iraqi factions. Let us recognize that America has done all it can do for the Iraqis and go forward from there with the strategy of a phased withdrawal coupled with negotiations with the other countries in the region, something we should already be doing.
We must continue to fight against Islamic extremism and spend our resources at securing the homeland against attacks not engage in a futile attempt at nation building. We are squandering our resources, and most importantly, asking the best and brightest young men and women in uniform and their families to serve and sacrifice in a war biased on lies. They must and will do their duty regardless.
We all know that this war is really all about. It’s always been about the oil and who controls the oil. That is what the phrase in “America’s national interest in the region” means this administration has squandered decades of American credibility on defense and foreign policy to control the oil in Iraq. Only the bitter-enders on the right fail to recognize it for what it is, a foreign-policy disaster of the first magnitude.
Glen Johnstone
Gunter, Texas