Regardless of one’s particular viewpoint on the Iraq war, we would do well as a society to agree upon some basic principles of civility in our discourse on the subject. In his letter on March 24 (“Protesters hurting American morale”), Jonathan Lotz seems to have cast such principles to the wind with his assertion that anti-war protesters are traitors who “hope that Iraq defeats us.”

Opposition to the tasks, which have been given our soldiers by others (the government), is quite different from opposition to the soldiers themselves; inquiry as to whether the United States should be involved in a particular military campaign is quite different from advocacy of her defeat in that campaign.

All the anti-war activists I know prefer not to see the Bush administration’s war plans carried out, but wish for the safe return of service members, should this war continue to unfold.

It is unfortunate that Lotz’s fanatical patriotism has allowed crass reductionism to creep into his argument, to the point where he simplistically associates anti-war viewpoints with a desire to see American soldiers killed.

Reilly Liebhard

Senior

Political Science