On March 19, Watertown Times City Editor Perry White published his op-ed article, “Afghanistan: America’s Hubris and Folly.” Some members of the north country chapter of Veterans For Peace wrote Mr. White to thank him for his honesty and courage. We agreed with him that Afghanistan is not worth another American life. With Fort Drum annually injecting over $1.5 billion into the area’s economy, we and Mr. White will likely hear that we don’t “support our troops.” Really?

Driving a vanload of patients every week to the Syracuse Veterans Affairs hospital, I see up close several generations of fellow vets bearing the effects of conflicts both ongoing and lost to history. So many need help to reach the care they deserve, but can’t afford the travel costs. A nation that can’t give its veterans the care they need, needs to stop making more veterans.

Veterans For Peace spent two semesters at Jefferson Community College telling students who are active-duty, recent vets and Army family about our local website, nc-vfp. There were 4,423 hits on our website’s links to VA benefit websites, businesses offering GI/vet discounts, information on how to report defective body armor and facts about depleted uranium (the “new Agent Orange”). House Armed Services Committee member Rep. Bill Owens helped us restore college funding for 160 JCC military spouse students.

Rep. Owens and Channel 7 helped us get 87,000 stop-lossed troops an extra year to apply for their back pay. WWNY-TV also worked with us to publicize Guard and Reserve re-employment rights and expose a faulty Pentagon study on toxic battlefield dust. We support our troops, but not the politicians and generals who send them to die so far from home — 293 Fort Drum troops and other locals killed so far.

Is war our only expression of patriotism? The current generation of schoolchildren has been shown little else. Can we honor the warrior but not the war, love firefighters but hate the fires that kill them? Warrior-General Dwight Eisenhower said, “I think people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have it.” Now, please? Let’s welcome our troops home now and take care of them.

Roland Van Deusen

Clayton

Thousands of readers like you have made Northern New York Newspapers the number one ranked website* for local news and sports coverage in the north country.

You can continue on to this article in a few seconds, or you can visit one of our websites:

• Watertown Daily Times
• The Ogdensburg Journal
• Daily Courier-Observer