Dear Editor,
I write this letter on the eve of the Democratic Convention in Boston and I am looking forward to it. Lately I have been working in support of local Democrats and also for national candidates such as our wonderful Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold who always makes me proud. He partnered with Republican John McCain to create campaign finance reform and was the only brave Senator to vote against the Patriot Act that authorized the government to look into our library habits and health records. He is fond of saying that he voted against the Patriot Act because he read it.
I also am supporting Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.
I want to not make this a Bush-bashing letter; the high road is always a better one. But this is such a crucial time and election. I can’t remember when the country was more polarized, except perhaps, in the days of the growing opposition to the war in Viet Nam.
A couple of weeks ago I attended a political workshop sponsored by the Wellstone people from Minnesota. Paul Wellstone was the liberal (or progressive if you prefer) senator from Minnesota who died in a plane crash shortly before the election that would have returned him to the Senate for another term. Needless to say, all the people at the training were a bit to the left.
I was talking to a group of them about the Iraq war and how it reminded me so much of Viet Nam. I was met with a sea of blank faces. I realized everyone there, some of them graying and middle-aged, were still younger than I and did not have a memory of that war—how it started slowly with a few American “advisors” killed, and then the progression of dead, now so graphically displayed by the Viet Nam War Memorial in Washington, D.C. The monument starts with the wall of a few dead at ground level and goes on to become a huge wall of names – thousands and thousands soldiers killed in a far away country on the other side of the world; in the end for no discernable reason or accomplishment.
John Kerry was one of the ones who came home from that war, after being in the thick of combat including seeing comrades die, rescuing some of them, killing Viet Namese himself, and receiving wounds. He came back and asked the U.S. Senate how one can ask a soldier to be the last to die for a mistake.
There are reasons I like John Kerry. I like it that he is complex and understands nuance. I like it that he has a wife who is her own person, has her own money and would, I think, become another first lady similar to Eleanor Roosevelt. But the main reason I like him is that I believe Kerry and his wife have an understanding of the world, this small planet that gets smaller every day. I think they know how we might repair the present damage to our international relationships.
I hope those of you who do remember Viet Nam also remember what the country felt like at that time; how that war touched everyone; and remember the vow so many of us took – “never again.” I hope those of you who are too young to remember will take our word for it.
Judy Gibson
Dell Prairie