Letters to the Index-Tribune editor, May 26, 2023

Our 161st Memorial Day

EDITOR: In 1865, in remembrance of the 600,000 soldiers killed in the Civil War, Congress created the first Memorial Day.

Since then, our nation has found it necessary to "celebrate" an additional 161 Memorial Day as the number of Americans killed in foreign wars continues to grow. It could easily be named "National Mourning Day" as we exceed 1,400,000 U.S. soldiers who have died in combat since that first Memorial Day. If this number doesn't get your attention, consider that it doesn't include the 90,000,000 civilians killed worldwide in WWI and WWII alone.

We have continued sending our offspring to fight in the 37 conflicts we've fought since the end of WWII.

How does one explain that? Maybe we are just plain stupid. Or, more sadly, perhaps we love war too much to quit.

Since the recent invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, we have buried 7,000 uniformed Americans. We have added to our burdened nation the daunting task of rehabilitating the other 44,000 wounded soldiers that are now home. These numbers don't include the over 3,000 civilian contractors that were also killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In addition, research compiled by the Costs of War Project at Brown University found an estimated 30,177 active duty personnel and veterans who have served in the military since 9/11 have died by suicide, compared with 7,057 killed in post 9/11 military operations.

Add in the $4 trillion our treasury spent, and it's difficult for me to understand why we are not in the streets protesting this senseless waste of human talent and national resources.

At closing in on 81 years old and a former U.S. Army Infantryman, I still remember the protests and civil unrest the Vietnam War generated that ultimately changed the White House. But where are the people with the slogans and chants of protest today?

In Rick Atkinson's book on the war in Western Europe, “The Guns of Last Light,” he tells of Patricia O'Malley, who was a year old when her father, Major Richard James O'Malley, a battalion commander in the 12th Infantry, was killed by a sniper in Normandy. She later wrote of seeing his headstone for the first time in the cemetery at Colleville, above Omaha Beach. "I cried for the joy of being there and the sadness of my father's death. I cried for all the times I needed a father and never had one. I cried for all the words I had wanted to say and wanted to hear but had not. I cried and cried."

How many new tears will be shed by America's mothers, fathers, widows, and parentless children in the years ahead before we tell Congress that we've "shed all the tears we ever want to shed?"

Stephen Kyle

Sonoma

Swearing at school

EDITOR: When my son was in junior high, I was called from work for an emergency meeting with his teacher. I expected something bad had happened. Yes. He had sworn in front of a teacher!

I asked him what happened. Some kid had accidentally hit him in the head with a 2x4 and he yelled "Oh s---.“ Can I say that here, in describing the reaction to an actual event?

I showed the teacher the lump on his head and asked her "What would you say if hit in the head by a 2x4? Show me where hearing a swear word injured you.“

I could see she thought I was a bad parent.

I point out one broken window and one sorely disappointed staff member and ask "Who was injured by a few common expletives? The teenagers? Have you heard how they talk?“

I suppose taking a few minutes to edit the message to something like "Kids, I am so disappointed by your unruly behavior and I have taken time to choose words that in no way express the true depth of my feelings."

Everybody happy?

Jessie Gordon

Sonoma

‘Ain’t nobody’s business’

EDITOR: Sexuality, everyone's got it, but it surely isn't catching. It comes with being born and manifests itself in different ways. It's just nature's packaging, like eye color, height or nose shape. Basically, the biological hand you're dealt at birth.

This is so obvious it seems ridiculous to have to say so, but a glance at our current culture proves different. For those of the political and/or religious right view, it's their business. And there are versions of sexuality, LGBTQ+, who they don't like and want those individuals scorned and ostracized and considered undesirable in society.

In focus, these pejorative judgments and (with some) actions, make the victimization of other people as unfit and unwanted justifiable, disregarding biological (genetic, hormonal, neurological) reality. As if the "branded" one had any choice in the matter. And even if one did exercise choice in the matter of sexuality, so what. Why is that personal choice anyone else's concern?

That a putative modern society would consider sexuality as earthly relevant to anything of importance is (ahem) flagrantly ridiculous.

The bad guys in this outmoded movie are not LBGTQ+ folks, it's the ones that use this biological variation or individual choice as an excuse for persecution. And when it's done purely and insidiously for political reasons to curry favor for votes, it's reprehensible and despicable.

"Ain't nobody's business,“ sang Billie Holliday back in the ‘40s, in reference to her personal choices, and it ain't nobody's damn business today.

All praise to the courageous students at New College of Florida who've stood up to the cowardly bullying of that State's Governor.

Will Shonbrun,

Sonoma

Send letters to editor/publisher Emily Charrier at emily.charrier@sonomanews.com.