Soldiers are not defenders of all things free

I'm writing in response to Stan Sporny's editorial in the Sept. 20 edition of The Parthenon. The editorial lambasted the West Virginia Patriots for the Peace "Wall of Remembrance," which was displayed at a peace rally held on campus last week. The editorial then went on to glorify the American soldier as purveyor and defender of all things free.

The "Wall of Remembrance," much like the Vietnam Wall, documents the names of U.S. soldiers slain in a conflict. It isn't un-American and it doesn't encourage terrorism. What red-blooded voting Americans like Sporny fail to understand is that the message of peace is two-fold and not easy. In the words of the deceased Trappist monk and peace activist Thomas Merton, "Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war. It demands greater fidelity to the truth and a much more perfect purity of conscience."

The reason peace groups focus on American wrongdoing in Iraq is because WE, and not the insurgents, are the aggressors in our current situation. Had our president not lied about WMD's or FALSELY INSINUATED that Sept. 11 and Saddam Hussein were directly connected, our fighting men would not be dying in the first place.

Regrettably, the American soldier has become a brain washed pawn used for Neoconservative imperial aims. Isn't it ironic that a former National Guardsmen who went AWOL starts a war and then his friends get rich from profiteering? Isn't it ironic that deregulation has allowed the media to become lulled into complacency to the point that most journalists couldn't ask a hard question if their life depended on it. Isn't it ironic that our selected/elected leader will not answer Cindy Sheehan when she asks him why her son is dead?

I hold no illusions as to what our soldiers do, but I appreciate and respect them more than our government does. Our fighting men live a life of sacrifice, and it angers me that they are being so blatantly misused.

Although you talk a good game Professor Sporny, I have the suspicion that you literally wouldn't be caught dead in army green. Neither would I. Just don't go around presuming that peace activists don't respect soldiers.

Adam Brown senior Print journalism major