Why Are We Killing People Who Aren’t a Threat to Us?
Why Are We Killing People Who Aren’t a Threat to Us?
Editor,
I am a United States of America American. The Latin countries refer to us as “Norte Americanos De Los Estados Unidos.”
I was born in San Juan Bautista, Calif., U.S.A. Just a few hundred yards from the mission which gave its name to the “City of History.”
The mission was built mainly by Native Americans. We called them Indians because Columbus didn’t quite get to where he was going.
The mission was not built in the United States of America. It was built in the Spanish territory of California in North America.
This territory then became Mexican territory after Mexico won its independence from Spain and then the United States “acquired” it after invading Mexico in 1846 and winning a bloody war.
I think I am very lucky that I was born in the United States of America but sometimes I am very embarrassed by some of our leaders and by some of the things that we do and by our national mentality of power and superiority.
In spite of our tendency to think of ourselves, exclusively, as the only Americans, it is in fact that the citizens of Mexico are Americans, as are the citizens of Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, etc, etc.
For the past couple of years I have been embarrassed by President Bush and Vice President Cheney and Attorney General Gonzalez.
I am also unhappy with a majority of my fellow citizens who appear to be either unconcerned or blindly supportive of our military adventures which are tremendously expensive and violent and sometimes not absolutely necessary nor very beneficial.
I am not comparing what we are doing with what Hitler’s Germany and Tojo’s Japan did to cause World War II. But I am saying that because the majority of the citizens of Germany and Japan were either unconcerned or blindly supportive of their leaders they later became the victims of retaliation and their countries were destroyed.
Let us not be unconcerned that we are killing too many people who have never been a threat to us and let us not be blindly supportive of the notion that it is our “Manifest Destiny” to Americanize and dominate the world.
Frank Valenzuela
Hollister
