 Thanks to Pulse for letting me know about anti-war Iraq veteran
After listening to Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey speak Saturday night at St. Stephen’s School in Minneapolis, I am further enlightened by the power of the human spirit to revive itself and to change.
If you listen to his speech, you will be blown away listening to what he has to
say about his experience as a Marine recruiter, and recruiting practices of the
U.S Marines, and his experience as a sergeant in Iraq.
 He
further advises citizens that if we wish to make a change or stop recruiting practices
of the Marines who are taking advantage of poor or vulnerable youth in high schools,
we should go to the recruiters in their offices and ask them if they would come
speak at a forum or to a group about the recruitment methods and training practices
they received while becoming a recruiter. Sergeant Massey says this is the one
thing the recruiters are deathly afraid of, because they know what they are doing
and that what they were taught is wrong. He emphasized how we, the citizens, have
power: “The recruiters and the government will back down if you push them.
If they push you, you push back.”
A few other powerful excerpts from his speech include:
“You the community, the citizens, are the hero. It is the community that
is the hero because you are the ones who are going to be supporting loved ones
when they come home and you have to watch them drink themselves to death to forget
what they saw and did in Iraq. I don’t owe the Marine Corps anything. I
owe the taxpayers, because they pay for the bullets going into the war and killing
innocent civilians. Iraqis aren’t the enemy, we are the enemy.”
Let us join hands with each other and make a bold attempt to stop this war and
instill moral values back into our country, people’s minds and our reputation.
By speaking against the enemy and condemning the enemy we will not get anywhere,
because we all refuse to listen to each other. We must embrace each other and
compromise.
We must speak the truth calmly and steadily, and listen to people like Sgt. Jimmy
Massey, who know the truth through firsthand experiences. We must do what we can
to help him, and others like him, speak the truth and let their voices be heard
all over the country and the world.
Share what he says with your friends, relatives and everyone you can. Let the
truth be heard.
Jessica Thoennes
St. Paul
Pulse interviews are what more Americans need to read
 Right
on, Pulse! Lately you guys have just run one great cover story after another.
It’s bracing to hear such honest, intelligent opinions from people like
Jim Wallis,
the Iraq veteran
and Naomi Klein.
These are not people you would read in the Star Tribune or hear about on Rush
Limbaugh, but they are the ones telling the truth. If more people in this country
could read these kinds of interviews, instead of the endless screaming of talk
radio, it would be a very different America.
I think so many people are working hard to keep from going bankrupt, and are
so afraid by everything the media tell them, that it’s all they can do
to get through the day. I like what Naomi Klein said: Every movement starts
with a group of people who were not afraid.
Anyway, thank you, Pulse, for opening minds.
Beth McGaughey
Minneapolis
Wallis’ secret may be his committment to peace and justice
 Thank
you for the article
on Jim Wallis. Perhaps the key to Wallis’ success and endurance is
his focus on active nonviolence within the ethical commonality of universal
religious precepts. Beliefs that are contrary to those voiced by the totalitarian
state disrupt the incessant, repetitive dogma of obedience and control to authority.
What nullifies any organized revolt to break the present status quo of distrust
and division of the body politic is belief in the power of the dollar over the
power of “good will” as the driving force for people.
R. A. Bode
St. Paul
Palestinians, other Arabs to blame for conflict, not Israel
In response to letter writers Nick and Mary Eoloff (“Israel
needs to admit its policies are misguided” 4-6-05), Israel did not
“destroy their (Palestinian) society”—Palestinians are doing
that to themselves. And Palestinians were not “dispossessed” by
Israel, but by their own.
On a recent speaking tour through the Twin Cities, Nonie Darwish, an Egyptian
from Gaza whose father was a shahid (Muslim martyr), blames Arab leadership,
not Israel, for the situation in the Middle East. Darwish, who now lives in
the U.S., expressed outrage at Arab leaders who “discriminate against
Palestinians.”
 None
of the Arab countries—which occupy 99 percent of the land in the Middle
East region—will permit people living in the Palestinian territories enter
into their countries, where they could resettle and get on with their lives.
“Yet these same nations spend all kinds of money to teach hate and to
incite violence against Jews and Israel,” says Darwish, who postulates
that Arab leadership does this “to control” by keeping Al-Jazeera
and the masses focused on Israel, “so no one questions the injustices
of their own corrupt regimes where women have few rights and people are still
stoned to death.”
Born in Cairo, Darwish moved to Gaza after President Nasser of Egypt chose her
father to lead the “fedaeen” militant operations against Israel—Gaza
was then under Egyptian control. In 1956, when she was 8 years old, her father
was killed by the Israelis and became a national hero. Darwish grew up learning
“to hate Jews” and “that Israel must be destroyed,”
teachings she says she could never quite consolidate yet wasn’t free to
question. She “never met a Jew” until coming to the U.S. in 1978,
and her experiences didn’t match what she had been taught. Today she finds
it incomprehensible that “1.5 billion Arabs can’t allow for 6 million
Jews” and says she is “embarrassed by other Muslims who refuse to
stand up to the Arabs” instead “excusing the hatred and the violence”—like
the massacre by Muslims of Chechnian school children and the Palestinian suicide
bombings of Israelis—“by calling such murderers ‘freedom fighters.’”
Likewise, I am embarrassed by “peace” activists who buy into the
hate, bashing Israel. Like Darwish, I wonder why these people blame Israel and
not the Arab league of many nations who helped create, if not orchestrate, this
mess and who teach hatred of other human beings.
The Palestinians, and Israelis too, are but pawns in a much bigger, very deadly
game. Darwish restores hope that someday the hate may end, if but by one person
at a time.
Cheryl Fields
St. Paul
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