While I cannot speak for the protesters that Dr. Kuck comments on (Feb. 16), I must respond when he asks “Which teachers have failed to teach these people recent and not so recent history?”

I speak only for myself when I say that perhaps their teachers are people such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who said that America was “on the wrong side of a world revolution.”

Maybe they learned from people such as Dwight Eisenhower, who said, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in a sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

More likely, however, these protesters learned from people such as Hermann Goering, who said, “Of course people don’t want war … All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for a lack of patriotism.”

So in response to Dr. Kuck, I, as a dissenter, find no fault with American values such as liberty, tolerance, decency and respect of human dignity. I just happen to believe that this war does nothing to further those ideals.

In an administration that justifies such things as torture, you have to wonder what sort of national amnesia has come over this country. When you call into question the patriotism of those you disagree with, you advocate the same fascism that you wrote against. Just like when George Bush uses “freedom” as a euphemism for “occupations,” it’s called irony.

Daniel Coulombe, Lewiston

Copy the Story Link