HispanicVista Columnists

Uncivil War
By Raoul Lowery Contreras

I reminded the audience of 2000 Filipino, Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese and Laotian Hmong immigrants (mostly new citizens) at Sacramento State University that they or someone in their families had fought side by side with American soldiers, sailors and Marines in WWII, or Korea or South East Asia.

They enthusiastically applauded my reference to their fight for freedom and my salute to them. Later, when I listened to the tape I noted that not only did they enthusiastically applaud at the end, some cheered… cheered. I was there to speak of Iraq.

I reminded them that today’s war started long before 9/11; that it started when Iranians took American diplomats hostage (1979), when 240 Marines were killed in Beirut (1982) by Hezbolla, a group run by Iran that paid up to $100,000 in rewards to suicide bombers. Attacks followed on the World Trade Center (1993), on American embassies in Africa, on the Kohbar Towers in Saudi Arabia and on the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen, all resulting in American deaths, all before 9/11.

There are many people in the world who wish to kill us, I reminded them, perhaps as many as a 100-million of them, mostly Muslims who style themselves Holy Warriors, JIHADISTS.

When they or their families fought with Americans, they fought for freedom and that the fight for freedom comes in many forms. In the past the fight was with the Japanese and Communists. This time, I told them, the form is fighting Jihadists who, I said, wanted to kill them and me and our daughters, our sons and parents because we don’t proclaim, Allah akbar!

Why are we in Iraq? We are there and in Kuwait before this because we must be, for there is no one else that can be the world’s policeman. There must be stability in the Middle East; we must help moderate Arab states like Kuwait, for the world needs their oil. We must destroy those who pay for murderers to murder innocents like the 3000 people starting their workday at the World Trade Center on 9/11.

We are not there for Iraqi oil for we don’t buy Iraqi oil. Japan does, Europe does, China and India do. The world needs a stable oil market. We are the only country that can “enforce” stability, whether some among us like it or not.

For a personal answer to why we are in Iraq, I asked them to remember and hold the image of one particular Iraqi woman. She was covered, as per Muslim law, from head to toe except for her eyes. She was photographed with her right hand raised high with her index finger covered in purple ink put there as proof of her voting. She voted, I reminded them, in a free election for the first time in her life and that I wished she would vote in many more.

My tape recorder recorded cheers. It did not, however, record the war critics present.

Later, an Anglo woman approached me to tell me she was a retired lawyer with the Sacramento Superior Court. She was shaking with rage; she told me she hated me for supporting the war. She especially hated me for stating that this war was the least costly in casualties of all wars in American history. In the four years of war with and in Iraq, 1650 days, 1.8 Americans a day have been killed (0.9 per day this October) in combat, in contrast to 62 a-day in the Korean War and 15 a-day in the 3650-day Vietnam War.

How about the 800,000 Iraqis WE’VE killed, she screamed. We have not killed “800,000” Iraqis. Perhaps Sunni or Shia militias have, but we haven’t. One struggles to maintain civility with an enraged and hysterical fanatic; I walked away telling her that this is a free country and she was entitled to her opinion, as I was to mine. She screamed that I was “wrong” and that I had no right to a “wrong” opinion, really, she screamed that.

She is typical of enraged war critics-- who double as enraged Bush critics, who double further as very bitter Americans demanding presidential impeachment.

As I walked away, a young Hmong man and an elderly lady approached me. He introduced himself as a University of California student -- she was his great grandmother. She spoke to me with tears in her eyes. He translated her Hmong words.

“My grandmother says she lost her husband, two brothers and my father fighting the Communists. Before that our family fought the Japanese. She thanks you for reminding us what freedom is and that it costs.”

This tiny Laotian Hmong grandmother had paid a very high price for freedom. So have the voting women in Iraq and Afghanistan. So have we with 3100 hostile-caused deaths in Iraq. The enraged lady who screamed at me has not -- because she thinks that freedom is free, that those who fight for freedom are wrong.

Contreras’ books, THE ILLEGAL ALIEN: A DAGGER INTO THE HEART OF AMERICA?? and, A HISPANIC VIEW OF AMERICAN POLITICS AND THE POLITICS OF IMMIGRATION are available at www.amazon.com and www.barnesandnoble.com