Dear Editor,

I would like to share with your readers some thoughts from three American heroes.

David Hackworth joined the army at age 15, spent over seven years of his military career in various combat theatres, and retired with the distinction of being America’s most highly decorated soldier. In regard to Iraq, he says, “Should the president decide to stay the war course, hopefully at least a few of our serving top-uniformed leaders … will do what many Vietnam-era generals wish they would have done: Stand tall and publicly tell the American people the truth about another bad war that could well lead to another died-in-vain black wall. Or even worse.”

Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, another purple heart recipient and former Head of Central Command for U.S. Forces in the Middle East, says, “It’s pretty interesting that all the generals see it the same way, and all the others who have never fired a shot and are hot to go to war see it another. We are about to do something that will ignite a fuse in this region, that we will rue the day we ever started.”

Finally, these words from Martin Luther King: “A time comes when silence is betrayal. We are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness so close around us. We are called upon to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation, for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.”

Jim Chenoweth

New Castle