To the Journal editor:

Let me start by saying NO TO WAR IN IRAN. It is unwanted, unnecessary, unwise and unwarranted and that the U.S. is the aggressor. I say this about Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Iraq and so many others. Something like 37 nations have been victims of U.S. intervention, with more than 20 million killed in our name, using the excuse of national security and national interests, often using the policy of pre-emption ahead of any perceived or actual threat, to bring “democracy” to the world.

Why? To dominate, to rule, to dictate to our benefit, dictating policy, calling those who resist U.S. intervention and intrusion “terrorists” not allowing these people and nations the same freedoms of will that we claim to have, but these cannot and should not be dictated by force of threats, bombs, lies, deception and manipulation of the media.

That power corrupts has never been truer than now in the history of the United States. National security is just an excuse, an excuse for the few, not the many, to keep the many in chains, obedient and servient to the status quo of the hierarchy of the few.

This history of American intervention and meddling in the affairs of other nations because they are and want to be free of the U.S. dominance and capitalist dictates is wrong, immoral, amoral, has been going on far too long in the time span of American history.

The polity has been bent on keeping wages down, profits up, people poor and rich, richer. We need to even the playing field between the work force (labor) and business, lessen the inequality of wealth, between races and sex. There is something frightening happening in this country of ours, the lack of tolerance toward others, toward difference, toward dissent.

Patriotism is a word — it does not deny the right to be different, to dissent, but by clipping the right to dissent, says that we must, all of us, be alike, be clones of everything that everybody is, thinks or does. We do not protect the flag by desecrating the Constitution, and those who die, fighting our nation’s conflicts, will have died in vain.

They died to preserve our Constitution and the right to engage in offensive conduct and speech.

FRED JAKOBCIC

Marquette