New York Journal News: "Peace" Protesters Show Their True Colors
Writer wouldn't listen to facts
(Original publication: April 9, 2005)
In reply to "Peace demonstration was full of hate": As he did when he put himself in the middle of peaceful demonstrators in White Plains, Kieran Michael Lalor misrepresents facts.
When Mr. Lalor approached the man he refers to as the "ringleader," it was right after that organizer had solicited people to state their feelings about a war all the demonstrators feel was unwarranted, unwise and continues unabated. Mr. Lalor accused the Iraq war opponents of inviting another 9/11 attack and trying to parallel the invasion of Iraq with the war against Adolph Hitler. His comments, in the midst of people who all opposed to the war, including veterans of World War II and family members of military men who were killed in Iraq, surprised and angered many.
Several people attempted to remind him that the 9/11 Commission clearly said that Iraq was not involved in the attack and that the reason used for the invasion was an imminent threat from weapons of mass destruction that did not exist. Mr. Lalor used a photo of a smiling child with a Marine's helmet on his head to show that the Iraqi people want us and thank us. He would not consider that his photo must be contrasted to the deaths of more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians, most women and children, whose families are likely unhappy with the U.S. effort. We who oppose the war support our brave military who are dying in an unjustified and badly planned war of choice. We think they should be brought home now.
Jeanne D Shaw, Croton On Hudson,
War about conquest, not freedom
(Original publication: April 9, 2005)
As a veteran of the United States military, I take serious issue with Kieran Michael Lalor's characterization of anti-war protesters as "America haters." I was not at the demonstration, but his disparaging charge is one that has been repeated reflexively and continuously by close-minded "patriots" long before the invasion of Iraq.
As a military man, I swore to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies foreign and domestic. It was my duty to become part of America's machinery of national defense, and I was glad to be that. But our invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with self-defense, the Constitution, fighting terrorism, or destroying non-conventional weapons. Nor did it have anything to do with liberation, since the dictator we removed was the same one we effectively installed. Talk about "naive." Instead, the invasion's purpose was to impose a new style of American-led Zionist subjugation and conquest in the Middle East through the use of massive military force, threats and intimidation.
Mr. Lalor should know that Iraqi children do not need him to "befriend" them. What they need is for our soldiers and airmen to stop bombing and raiding their cities and towns and murdering their mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters by the thousands every month. They need us to stop wiping out entire families at checkpoints; raping and sodomizing their female family members in our Saddam-like prisons; and to stop promoting our self-serving war crime as some sort of humanistic exercise in freedom-building.
Victor Lama, Thornwood