Letter To the Editor

Recently you published a letter undersigned by 252 members of the UB faculty and staff for peace. I would just like to dispel some of the rumors listed in that letter so that every reader of The Spectrum may understand how that letter does not pertain to the current situation in the least.

1. 
   There have not been "extensive casualties among the men and women of the U.S. armed forces," as the letter claims. Total U.S. casualties as of April 9 are very few, and only a fraction of those actually came during combat. As well, the few Iraqi citizens that have been killed are minimal in comparison to the number of Iraqis Hussein has killed during his reign of terror.
   


2. Just the other day, U.S. troops found chemical weapons in Iraq, and since Saddam has them, we must believe he would use them.
   
3. The president authorizing military action is not unconstitutional; rather that power is specifically mentioned in the constitution, with the only restriction on that power being the War Powers Act, which Bush has yet to break.
   
4. The war on Iraq has strengthened our economy, as the stock market has shown the first green numbers in over a year since we began.
   
5. In 1993, Israel offered to return all the settlements in exchange for peace at Camp David. Arafat rejected that proposition, as he does not truly want peace.
   
6. Less than 10 percent of oil used in America comes from Iraq, and changing our energy sources has nothing to do with war.
   

Clearly the writer of that letter did not understand the reasons for which we are, and ought to be, in this current war. The United States does stand at a major turning point, and we must fight dictators and terrorism at every turn if we ever hope to live in a terror-free world. I think we all learned on Sept. 11, 2001, that isolationism is not the answer.