This week I made up my mind about Iraq. We need to get out of Iraq, and we need to do it as quickly as possible.
Watching the results of the two helicopter crashes, Diane Sawyer’s interview with Jessica Lynch and the PBS retrospective program on war correspondents all brought back my memories of the Vietnam era.
I now can feel the country dividing against itself as it did 35 years ago. I remember the tears in Walter Cronkite’s eyes as he reported the Kent State killings.
He was much more surprised than I was. It wasn’t that I wasn’t saddened, but I genuinely knew some of us would die at home.
On this very campus we had a police riot with OSU police, Columbus police, the Franklin County Sheriff, Ohio Highway Patrol and who knows who else, maybe the National Guard or reserves, indiscriminately throwing tear-gas grenades. It was very uncool. The wind blew from the east that day pushing the acrid fog into the hospital complex.
They strapped the campus with a cyclone fence.
“Four Dead in Ohio,” Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young lamented in their unforgettable song. There were tears in my eyes as I listened to beautiful, young Jessica Lynch elaborate on the ordeal she had undergone in her firefight and capture.
More than 58,000 of my contemporaries died in Vietnam. Others – friends of mine- risked their lives to save their comrades in arms becoming heroes, but heroes who don’t speak of that time very much.
Hardly anyone speaks about it very much.
Now these are your contemporaries, my fellow students. These are the people you grew up with. These are you. There are even murmurings – just murmurings, mind you- of bringing the draft back. Pray for a high lottery number as the students just a year or two behind me did. For some that number meant their lives.
The government doesn’t let it be shown, but the war is here. It sneaks in. It comes into Dover, Delaware in aluminum boxes and rubber bags. Just days ago, it crept into your wallet when Congress agreed to give the administration $87 billion.
Be selfish. Think of your own circumstances. Assuming there are about 250 million U.S. citizens, that’s about $350 per man, woman and child. I know my 5-year-old granddaughter doesn’t make that much over a year so someone’s going to have to pick up the slack.
You, if you make enough money to pay taxes, your parents, no matter what, are footing the bill. Trust me, as a parent I know.
Do whatever you have to. Write, argue, march, assemble, vote. Fight for freedom by exercising all of the freedoms you own.
Follow what the Supreme Court does on the issue of the “detainees” held in Cuba. It is said that Chief Justice Rehnquist considers the question as important for the proper continuance of our division of powers among the executive, judicial and legislative branches of government as it was when Justice Marshall presided over Marbury vs. Madison.
If you don’t know the case, it is your obligation as a citizen to learn it and participate.
The motto of The Ohio State University is “Disciplina in Civitatem.” For those who don’t speak Latin, it means training in citizenship.
Rich Stelling is a continuing education student and former Lantern editor. He can be reached for comment at [email protected].
