Syria’s war is not America’s problem
September 4, 2013 6:02PM
Updated: September 5, 2013 2:22AM
Why do we as Americans have to face every tyrant, every troubled country and deal with all of the world’s problems? While kids are dying on our city streets, President Barack Obama and the rest of the government minions are putting us in another conflict we shouldn’t be in.
I, for one, have yet to forget how the Syrians danced in the streets after 9/11. When we get hit with devastating hurricanes on our coasts, who comes to our aid? The answer is nobody. We should follow Britain’s lead and stay out of Syria’s business.
If you believe for one minute that Syria is going to take a shelling and not retaliate, you haven’t been paying attention. This is one conflict we should have no part of.
Steve Medel, Tinley Park
Kerry flip-flopped from noble anti-war stance of his youth
Over 42 years ago, a charismatic 28-year-old Vietnam War vet gave one of the most riveting congressional presentations ever before Sen. William Fulbright’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Representing the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, John Kerry, a decorated, twice-wounded vet, gave impassioned witness to the utter futility of our senseless Vietnam War. Kerry looked the distinguished Sen. Fulbright in the eye and uttered these immortal words:
“How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? Each day to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam someone has to give up his life so that the United States doesn’t have to admit something that the entire world already knows, so that we can’t say we have made a mistake. Someone has to die so that President Nixon won’t be — and these are his words — ‘the first president to lose a war.’ ”
This past Sunday, the 69-year-old Kerry, who parlayed that 15 minutes of fame into a five-decade career as prosecutor, state lieutenant governor, senator, presidential candidate and now secretary of state, shuttled between five news shows. He looked all 310 million of us in the eye and flat-out lied about the need to bomb Syria and kill people as part of our taking sides in their horrendous civil war. In one of his most egregious comments, he lumped Syrian President Assad in with Hitler and Saddam Hussein as the only three leaders who “used these weapons in time of war.” Kerry conveniently excluded World War I, in which both sides used chemical weapons, and excluded all that phosphorus and depleted uranium we fouled Iraq with that will be maiming and killing Iraqi fetuses for generations to come. He also flunked the U.S. enabling test, in which Uncle Sam gave a pass to Saddam Hussein when he used chemical weapons on both Iranians and Iraqis in the 1980s, a time when Hussein was our dear Middle East ally. He also omitted that the U.N. reports the likelihood the Syrian rebels used the nerve agent sarin against Syrian troops last spring.
As an avid opponent of the Vietnam War from 1963, I still vividly recall Kerry’s inspiring “who will be the last man to die” testimony in 1971. I was shocked and sickened by Kerry’s coming full circle Sunday to champion not the end to a criminal war but, tragically, the call for another.
Walt Zlotow, Glen Ellyn
Bus shelters need bigger maps
The size of route maps displayed in Chicago bus shelters makes it difficult for travelers to read the text and details of the route. If you compare Chicago’s route maps with those in bus shelters in Paris, France, you can see that the Paris maps are much easier to read. I am sure that Chicago can provide the same level of service,
Marc Billon, Wicker Park
It’s noisy cutting the grass
Isn’t it about time somebody made a really silent lawn mower?
Ken Greenberg, Skokie
