PEACE: Where is U.S. commitment?

On the first Sunday morning of December l941, I was studying for my initial final exam at Cal Berkeley. I was 17 years old and was reading my notes for Philosophy 101 while listening to music on the radio. At one point the program was interrupted to announce Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. Within six months I joined millions of men and women in the Armed Forces. Four years later both the Axis powers had surrendered. We never doubted the reasons for our involvement in the war.

Since that time our nation has been involved in five more major wars, and in none of them has the enemy surrendered. In Korea we achieved a truce after three years of warfare with a loss of 35,000 troops. We withdrew from Vietnam after 15 years of fighting rather than suffer total defeat. By that time 56,000 of our troops had been killed.

Desert Storm, often called the gulf war, was a success as our forces pushed the Iraq army out of Kuwait, but we withdrew, only to return later to attack Iraq and engage the Iraq army again. At the same time we retaliated against al-Qaida by invading Afghanistan, where we continue to fight. Our casualty rates are high, and the cost of conducting two wars simultaneously is now nearly two billion dollars each week.

Since World War II ended 70 years ago our nation has been at war almost 30 years. And if certain members of Congress have their way our wars may continue. There are some who would like to attack Iran, there is concern about North Korea and some hint we may have to fight Pakistan someday.

But don't we consider ourselves a peace loving people? Must we fear any nation when we have the finest Army, the largest arsenal of weapons in the world and are now spending 19 times more on defense and acquiring further armament than our combined NATO allies? And it seems to me we are sacrificing our troops without any hope of a final resolution of the issues that caused us to go to war in the first place. When legislators and generals discuss our present wars on television they seem uncertain about what they expect the outcome to be. This ambiguity must cause our troops to question the purpose of their sacrifice, because in today's warfare there is no "surrender."

It has been said that "old men make wars for young men to fight." How true. A majority of our troops who have been killed, maimed, injured or are still missing in action following our various wars have been between 18 and 28 years of age.

I am strongly inclined to believe it is time we, as a nation, re-evaluate our commitment to peace and to consider focusing our priorities on improving life within our great nation, rather than forcing other nations to govern themselves as we would have them do.

KENNETH GREEN

Coeur d'Alene