Senator John Kerry, chairman of the panel, during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing last week.
(Win Mcnamee/Getty Images)
Where's the anti-war voice in Kerry's war hearing?
Senator John Kerry, chairman of the panel, during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing last week.
(Win Mcnamee/Getty Images)
April 27, 2009
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RE "NO counterparts to the young Kerry at war hearing" (Page A1, April 22): Senator John Kerry should be ashamed of himself. His finest moment was in 1971 before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. If he will recall, many in 1971 said that Vietnam was a threat to the United States because of the domino theory that the Communists were coming to get us in Harvard Square. Yet Kerry justifies the continued killings, bombings, and destruction in Afghanistan by saying that Al Qaeda is coming to get us.
There is no military solution. We need total withdrawal of the US military from both Iraq and Afghanistan, and massive cuts in the military budget of $1 trillion a year, with funding directed at providing homes, jobs, education, and healthcare here.
Kerry does a disservice to veterans by not inviting Iraq Veterans Against the War to testify to his hearing. He should remember his roots and his words: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"
Nate Goldshlag
Coordinator
Smedley Butler Brigade
Veterans for Peace
Arlington
IN 1971, as a recently discharged veteran (I did not serve in Vietnam), I recall cutting John Kerry's eloquent anti-war speech that he delivered to Congress out of The Boston Globe and hanging it on my wall. It stayed there until it turned yellow and crumbled to the floor. I find it ironic that in 2009 Senator John Kerry, now chairing the very committee that allowed him to express his views, is denying the same opportunity to his 21st-century counterparts in Iraq Veterans Against the War. I guess power really does corrupt.
Barry Brodsky
Swampscott 
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