47 Sailors Killed on Ship

As I watched the memorial service (April 24) for the sailors of the battleship Iowa, I cried along with our President for the loss of those lives to all of us. I recalled the Soviet sailors who also perished just weeks ago in their submarine, and I cried for them. My tears were both for the men and their families and the futility of their deaths, for where is the enemy? For these deaths, there is no enemy, only our thinking.

War and the projection of an enemy has been with us for thousands of years but we are slowly learning that it just doesn’t work. It didn’t work for us in Vietnam, it didn’t work for the English and Argentines in the Falklands, and it didn’t work for the Soviets in Afghanistan. Thousands of young people were sacrificed in those wars, as were the sailors of both countries, for us to understand at a deeper level the folly of war.

The President praised the men for their service to freedom and our flag. Freedom from what, an enemy? Who is the enemy for the men of the Soviet submarine? Who is the enemy for the men of the gun turret? The enemy today is in our imagination, in our minds, in our thinking. It is time to move more rapidly in negotiations with the Soviets, in the Middle East, and anywhere else where we project an enemy so our President will not have to attend another memorial service.

DAVID PARR

Santa Barbara